A Different Type of Love Story

After experiencing same-sex attraction as a young adult and living that out, Rachel Gilson found herself in a relationship with a young man who wanted to marry her. She had to think long and hard about God's design for marriage and what it would mean for her to be this man's wife. Marriage isn't like a little quick weekend project, like I need to stain the deck, you know.

It's a long-term building project, like I need to build a cathedral to worship the Lord. So, I think it was really good for me to actually soberly consider, do Andrew and I have what it takes to build this partnership in the gospel long term? This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at FamilyLifeToday.com. There's a lot all of us can learn about marriage from someone who has lived with same-sex attraction and had to think about marriage in some new ways.

We'll hear from Rachel Gilson about that today. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. Dave, you're in pastoral ministry. You've been in pastoral ministry for 30 years. Anyone who's in pastoral ministry in the year of our Lord 2020 is going to be confronted with questions about what we're talking about this week, issues related to gender and sexuality. Some of those questions coming from people who are struggling. Some of those coming from people who aren't struggling, who are saying, no, I'm fine with how I'm living.

I want this and Jesus too. Have you had to have some hard conversations? Yes, definitely. I think loving conversations. I think there's a desire, and I think it's a good desire for clarity. Like, okay, what's God's heart? What's scripture say? What is true?

What is untrue? What should be our response to a son or daughter who's asking those questions as well as a person in our church? I hate to say it. I sort of get excited about talking about those kind of questions. You're excited for honesty.

You're excited when people don't put up a veneer and they're willing to talk about real issues that they're facing. Don't hide. Please don't hide, and let's talk. And I hope I can be a representative of the heart of Jesus.

And you have to go back to Jesus and back to His word to say, okay, what does it say and what does that mean for me? We've been having a good, honest conversation this week with Rachel Gilson, who's joining us on Family Life Today. Hello, Rachel. Welcome back. It has been honest, and I think it's been gospel-centered.

That's how we want it to be. Rachel is an author. She's a speaker. She provides theological guidance and oversight for all of us who are a part of CREW and has written a book that is part memoir and part, as I said, part coaching manual for all of us in the culture to know how do we respond to the questions related to gender and sexuality in our friends' lives, in our kids' lives, in the lives of people we love in the church or outside the church.

Her book is called Born Again This Way, and it tells about your own experience with same-sex attraction, coming to Christ on the Yale campus, recognizing that you are going to have to put your sexual desires under the lordship of Christ if you are going to follow Christ. And ultimately, as we've already talked about this week, you making the decision to marry a man and to now be the mother of—is it one child? One child.

I want to be like an excellent college basketball player, one and done. One son. And Rachel, tell us a little bit about how somebody who in high school found yourself attracted to— Wait, wait, wait. I have to get into this because I underlined and highlighted this in your book because it's not something you read every day. It says, in 2007, I married a man, but it wasn't because I had fallen in love. Now, that's not something you read every day. Tell us about that. Well, and you know, as a campus minister, I work with a lot of young college women and they kind of—they get starry-eyed and they're like, tell me your love story. And I'm like, oh, you might be a little disappointed. Because it's not typical, it's not what you read, and it's not what our culture tells us is normal or should be normal.

No. We're presented with the idea that romance is the on-ramp into marriage. And I had never felt romantic with men.

I enjoy the company of men, but that hadn't been an avenue. And I happened to meet a young man named Andrew who had a bad haircut and wore clothes that were a little too big, but he was really Jesus-centered and really delightful. And then he started pursuing me, and this thing that was growing with Andrew really was real. I could tell, like, our lives are centered in the same way.

I really like him. I felt a lot of affection, and I think there's even some attraction here, but it felt kind of like a little flame that you have to cup your hands around to protect it. So, I thought, oh my goodness, can I build a marriage on that? And so, well, it drew me back to the Scriptures.

Well, what does the Word say? And I had to examine marriage again, and what I saw as God's picture for marriage is that marriage does one thing. It is designed to explain in living, breathing pictures around the world over the course of history the Gospel.

It is a picture of God's relationship with his people, and that part of that is faithfulness, part of that is sexual pleasure, part of that is procreation, part of that is male-female. And that you can have romance be a part of that picture, but actually you don't need romance to be a part of that picture. You know, marriage isn't like a little quick weekend project, like I need to stain the deck, you know, it's a long-term building project, like I need to build a cathedral to worship the Lord.

So, I think it was really good for me to actually soberly consider, do Andrew and I have what it takes to build this partnership in the Gospel long-term? Honestly, I kind of wish more of my students would have that kind of clarity as they sat down and considered what marriage is for instead of just being, letting infatuation be the gateway into marriage, because it's a long-term thing. Rachel, I just finished writing a book that has been released called Love Like You Mean It, and it's 1 Corinthians 13 applied to marriage, and it's exactly what you're saying. It's saying if we approach this with the romantic comedy mentality, with the pop song mentality, we're majoring on a minor part of what the love relationship, and Paul makes it clear under the inspiration of the Spirit, he puts hard words to what love is, words like patience and kindness and not self-seeking and bearing all things and hoping all things and enduring all things. This is what we're signing up for when we stand and say, I will love, honor, and cherish you for the rest of my life. I'm not sure how any husband decides to be a husband when they read Ephesians 5. It's like, oh, just love exactly like Christ did, you know, by dying to yourself.

But what about Andrew? That had to be a little disconcerting to him. It's not fireworks. Is she attracted to me? You know, what was he feeling? Because you remind me of a little flame, not fireworks.

I'm drawn to you like a little flame. How excited Dave would have been had I said, you know, I think there's a little something maybe there. Well, Andrew, luckily, is very secure as a human being, and I remember trying to put him off when he first asked me out. He knew everything about my story before he even got involved, which I think was really important. He just looked at me very realistically. He's like, well, Jesus has forgiven you, so how could I possibly hold that against you?

The thing about Andrew is that he loves Jesus just as much as I do, and he looks at everything through the gospel lens as well. So I do think there have been times, especially early in marriage, when you're still figuring out the sexual relationship. So I think it's important that we talk about sex and marriage realistically, because actually sex takes work. How much, if you could be honest, to say, how much did your past affect your sexual relationship in your marriage? You know, honestly, my sexual relationship in marriage has brought so much healing to my sexuality that actually has nothing to do with my attractional patterns, but has to do with some other major places where I had experienced sexual brokenness. And so I had to realize over time, ooh, my sexuality is tied into some things that are really unhelpful and really unbiblical. And actually experiencing the safety and the joy in a committed sexual relationship with one person has been such a blessing to me.

I've actually experienced healing and kind of, I'm picturing like a wall with deep cracks, like healing that gets poured deep down into those places. So for me, it's been a lot of joy. I think, too, as we think about our marriage. We're going to talk about our marriage, too? Yeah, Dave and I have been married 40 years.

Bob and Marianne just had 41 years for their anniversary. And you know what, I'm going to be honest, it's not a big bonfire all the time. It seldom is, actually. And yet that little flame that keeps going, that has warmed my soul and continues to that steadfast love that Jesus has. And the bond of Christ that we have together, it's living for something bigger than yourself.

And isn't that what we all need? Because when I'm living for Dave, he will be so disappointed because there's not a whole lot there. But if we're living on mission together, and that's what it sounds like you and Andrew have.

Yeah, our lives were oriented in the same direction. I was just reading Nancy Percy's book, Love Thy Body, and she was reporting a statistic I've seen in other places where it turns out the happiest people sexually are middle-aged married Christians. I think there is something very realistic about saying, oh, sex doesn't have to be this like movie scene all the time.

And yet, it can still be a place of such intimacy and joy and promise and connection. Well, let's talk about too, how do we as a church, there's so many blind spots that we carry. And how do we lovingly help our friends that are same-sex attracted?

What are the do's and don'ts? I think we're walking on eggshells and so nobody will say anything in fear of hurting or offending. What do you think, Rachel? What are some steps that we can take in the church as a body of Christ, but also as friends and even as parents? Yeah, well, and of course, some of our churches are in really different places. You know, you have some churches where love and acceptance is really high, but knowledge of the Bible is really, really low. And then you have other churches where knowledge of the Bible is really strong, but there's maybe insecurity about what having same-sex attracted people in the congregation would look like.

So, different churches are facing different realities as they come to the topic. One of the number one things we can do to love same-sex attracted people is just to listen. Let's say for a moment we're just talking about same-sex attracted people who are disciples, who are Christians. You just want to listen to their story because many people who experience same-sex attraction grew up in the church and were wounded in some way by the church. It's really helpful for us to take the time to listen to the stories, sometimes to apologize where necessary and to try to learn.

Just listening is such an important act of love. And then I think, too, another thing that we can do is we can talk very honestly about whether a life of long-term singleness looks like a prison or looks like a place of thriving in our church community. Because so many disciples who experience same-sex attraction will be called to long-term singleness. And if singleness looks like the Sahara Desert, then we are not living up to what Jesus has talked about.

He said very clearly, you will leave fathers and mothers and children and lands for my sake, but you will receive a hundred times more, not just in the life to come, but now. The church is designed to be a family now. And marrieds and singles, we need each other.

We need each other. And sometimes the only view of singleness in the church has been in your early 20s, let's just try to figure out how to pair you off because our only vision of the good life is the married life. Well, what do we say about Jesus Christ himself, who was an unmarried man where that was extremely abnormal? Or to Paul, I think we need to keep the dignity of marriage and recover the dignity of singleness and have honest conversations with our children, with our young adults, with our older adults about how both of those life stages are a part of God's vision for the way that he's glorified on earth. And I think also just being able to say I experienced same-sex attraction and have that be okay in the church.

We're not looking for a place to be celebrated like, yay, you're so fantastic because you experienced same-sex attraction, but how in the world can I get support for an issue in my life if I feel like I can't talk about it, right? So, if we practice speaking about all types of sexual temptation as things that people really face, we'll create space for people to be open and honest. Rachel, there's, you know, there's a little bit of a debate among whether the desire, the same-sex desire is something that will be perpetual, a lifetime phenomenon, or whether it ought to be, the expectation ought to be that it's lessening over time as you grow in grace and in sanctification.

What's your thinking on that? Sometimes, God comes in and completely removes a set of temptations to prove that he has all power in the universe. So, I know people whose attractions have been entirely changed either immediately or slowly over time, and I think that demonstrates God's power.

But there are also plenty of people who have earnestly sought change and haven't received it. A lot of those people have quoted back to me when Paul asked three times for the thorn in his flesh to be removed. And what God said is, your weakness will show my strength.

My grace is sufficient for you. I think at other times, God allows same-sex attraction to remain. He allows temptations to remain because when I say, I'm going to say no to this very strong desire so that I can say yes to Jesus, what I'm saying is, Jesus is worth saying yes to.

So, maybe it doesn't demonstrate power in the same way, but it demonstrates his worth and his beauty. And I think he calls some Christians to be that kind of light in the world because our culture thinks you are literally insane if you say no to this. They'll tell me, you know, you're repressed, you're homophobic, you're these types of things. I'm saying, I'm not any of those things. I've never been repressed.

What I am is in love with the God who made me. As a mother of a six-year-old in a part of the country where public schools are rapidly embracing a cultural view of sexuality. My daughter's kindergarten teacher is a woman who's married to another woman. So, how are you thinking about this as you think about raising a six-year-old and then a 16-year-old eventually? So, what we do is we just don't talk about it and hope it all resolves itself.

That's perfect. That's what we all want to do. Well, it's been a big challenge and I just want to be very clear that partially I feel like I'm flying blind because I wasn't raised in a Christian household. And I don't really have a lot of great examples to look to, so I'm just trying to rely a lot on God's Spirit and God's Word and God's people. So, one of the things I want to do over and over again, and I try to practice with my daughter, is we make it clear that Christians are not better than non-Christians. Actually, we are all, all, all sinners in need of the grace and truth of Jesus. We don't expect people who do not identify with God as their king to live according to the king's rules and that the first thing we want to see happen in someone's life is that they say yes to the gospel.

Because if you don't say yes to the gospel, well, what good is it to live up to the externals of religion if you don't have the person who it's all about? So I try to talk about that with my daughter all the time. And then I try to explain to her the positive vision for sexuality. I try to explain to her that husbands and wives are a picture of the gospel. Now, I've been talking to her about this, you know, since she was two or three, basically because I didn't know what to do and so I figured if I just talk to her about sex really early, maybe I'll catch it before it becomes awkward. But I do think it's brought some fruit, she does understand there's a major link between our bodies and procreation. Now, could she explain that as articulately as me?

I don't think so, but I do think it's gotten a little bit into her bloodstream. So we have a pattern, we do our family devotions in the morning over breakfast and we just read straight through the Bible like the real grown up Bible, right? So we are reading in, I forget, it must be 2 Samuel, we're reading 2 Samuel, we read the passage with our six year old about Amnon and Tamar.

Amnon loves his sister Tamar, supposedly, but that love is just a deranged sexual passion and as soon as he takes her, then he hates her immediately, right? So, first of all, that might be a weird passage to read with a six year old, but again, I don't know, I might be doing this all wrong. Did you explain it to her? But we explained it to her.

You did. I explained it to her, I said, hey, listen, there are passions that will lie to you and there are ways to use our bodies that are wrong and look how much pain it caused. Now, again, I really might be doing this in a wrong way, but I think there is power and safety in being honest because she's going to hear it on the playground. The youngest age of boys being exposed to pornography right now is nine.

If I'm waiting until after nine years old to talk about what sexuality is, I've lost the game. And how did you explain her teacher being married to a woman of the same sex? She actually just found out pretty recently because her teacher's wife gave birth to a child and my husband forgot that Ena didn't actually know she was married to a woman. So, my daughter, she's like, did you know she's married to a woman? I was like, oh, I did know. And she was like, how did they have a baby?

How does that happen? And so, we talked about, well, that you know that they can't, because she knew those two women couldn't take their bodies and make a baby. And so, I was like, right, so they had to go outside their marriage.

And she was kind of quickly like, is that wrong? And I'm like, right, we understand that there's only one place where sexual expression, I forget, she likes to refer to it as connecting bodies. That's the phrase she's locked on to. It's a good one.

It's a good one, right? So, like, there's only one place where God sanctions that, but we have to remember, your teacher isn't a terrible person just because this is how she's living her life. She's not responded to the gospel, right? There's lots of people who have not responded to the gospel. So, yes, this part of her life is not in order with what God has said, but her main issue is that she needs the gospel. I mean, I love the quote Rosaria Butterfield has said, a non-Christian gay person's problem isn't that they're gay, it's their unbelief.

Right. So, I think that's exactly the type of tack I'm trying to take to my daughter of saying, yes, of course, God has said yes to certain expressions and no to other expressions. But let's remember that receiving eternal life through Jesus Christ is the main thing, and we can't expect order in our lives if there's disorder right at that center. You know, Rachel, none of us in this room were ever having conversations with our six year olds about the things you're having to have conversations with your six year old about. I applaud you and the moms and dads who are in the middle of a cultural tsunami and trying to hang on for dear life and grasp for air in the process.

I think there's a lot of reason why parents of my age with kids who are young were feeling overwhelmed, were feeling afraid, because we haven't really had to do this in this culture. However, the gospel shines extremely bright in the darkness, the gospel did really well in the first century when things were just as, if not more, sexually messed up and philosophically messed up than they are now. I know God's not up there wringing his hands being like, what are we going to do? The gospel is the power of salvation for everyone who believes, and it actually makes the best sense of the world, and if I equip, if we equip our children with a worldview that actually explains who we are, what our bodies are for, and that there's someone who made us and loves us, it is actually more compelling than everything else that's happening in the world outside. One thing that I'm taking away from this conversation, Rachel, which I did not expect, is as a dad, as a husband, as a disciple, and I'm saying this for me and I'm hoping for the church, the way you're shining your light, it's your posture, it's your grace-filled and truth-telling balance that I long to be as a parent in a home, a disciple in a church, and just a man in the community.

I want to shine like you have. You've been a model for us, and I hope for our listeners to say, that's what the gospel should feel like to the community. Even though we're speaking truth that they don't want to hear, it's still inviting, and I think you've modeled for us.

I think your book models that as well. You're so honest, and yet all throughout, there's this warm light. It's bright, but it's warm.

It isn't blinding, I'm going to run away from this. It's no, I'm drawn to this, and I think that's the heart of Christ. Well, and let me add this to Rachel. This is not an easy book to write. You have been incredibly vulnerable and real, and that takes incredible courage knowing that there are going to be people that don't agree with you. And yet, as Dave said, you are a grace-giver and a truth-teller in a beautiful way. So, thank you. This helps us, and we need this in a time where we are pointing people to Jesus. Well, if any of that's true, to Him be the glory. And we believe it is true.

And again, thank you for being with us. We want to let our listeners know how they can get a copy of Rachel's book. It's called Born Again This Way. We've got copies in our Family Life Today Resource Center.

I'd encourage you to get it and to read it and to share it with others. Go online to familylifetoday.com to get your copy or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, the title of Rachel's book, Born Again This Way, Coming Out, Coming to Faith, and What Comes Next. Order online at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F as in Family, L as in Life, and then the word Today. Now, today is the last day of the week. It's the last day I have to encourage you to join the Family Life Today Legacy Partner Team.

I've mentioned this earlier this week. We've had some friends of the ministry who came to us knowing that we need some new families to join with us to be monthly contributors to the ministry of Family Life Today to provide the financial footing that makes this program possible. They have agreed that they will match every donation that we receive from a new legacy partner, somebody who signs on this week, they'll match your donations for the next 12 months dollar for dollar. So you become a legacy partner and say, we'll give $50 a month to Family Life Today.

They're going to match that with an additional $50 a month every month for the next 12 months. And that's a great opportunity for us, a great opportunity for you for your giving to go even farther. And if you sign on today as a new legacy partner, we would like to say thank you by sending you, first of all, a copy of my new book, Love Like You Mean It.

It's about what the Bible says real love in a marriage should look like. Then we're going to send you three episodes of the new TV show Slugs and Bugs featuring Randall Goodgame. Randall was a guest with us earlier this week. It's a great kids program for your children or your grandchildren. Finally, we'll send you a gift card that you can use to cover the registration cost for a weekend to remember marriage getaway.

And that card is good anytime. Once the getaways are back happening, once we get the all clear and can start hosting them again, you can use the getaway for yourself or you can pass it along to a friend. So all three of those items come to you when you become a Family Life Today legacy partner.

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And with that, we have to wrap things up for today. Thanks for being with us. Hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able one way or another to worship together with your local church this weekend. And I hope you can join us back on Monday when we're going to talk about how important it is for you as parents not just to be praying for your children as they head back to school this year, but to be praying with them as they head to school this year. Molly Melton will be here to talk about how she's been doing that with her kids and she's got some great ideas for all of us as moms and dads. So I hope you can tune in for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today, hope for tomorrow.