My mentor is Pauline D! (What a blessing!)

I could not imagine why anyone would ever think there was any other life for me. I was born gay and you can't change the way you are made. That thinking dominated my life until I was 34 years old, but "there truly is life after homosexuality."

I rejected my female identity from the very earliest days of my life. My thoughts were consumed with wanting to be a boy. I was molested around the age of 3 or 4; became sexually involved with another girl in my teens; was married at 18 thinking that would fix what was wrong with me and divorced at 22 because I couldn't handle living a way that was opposed to the real me.

My name is Dick Davis. I began my journey into the dungeons of homosexual behavior at the age of six years old. I stayed in slavery to my fleshly desires for most of my adult life, going deeper and deeper Even though I become a Christian at the age of 12, I had an intense craving that I could not break free from, no matter what I did or how hard I tried.

Wanting to become free and live a "normal" life, I pursued freedom through humanistically motivated programs, both secular and Christian-based. The problem was I searched for answers in all the wrong places - from the created, instead of the Creator. Instead of going to the Owner's Warranty Manual, I searched for answers in the yellow pages.

My mentor is Yen. Throughout my life, I have always struggled with the question of ‘who am I?’ and what it means to be a woman. Growing up, I was a tomboy - I didn’t like dolls, and much preferred to play with the boys. As a child and into adolescence, I was teased by a number of boys and there are several incidents where I was sexually harassed. I grew up in a Christian home and knew the truth about God. I remember signing a card at youth group when I was 13, which declared that I would wait for true love and stay sexually pure until marriage. I did not think this would ever be an issue for me. However, leaving home at 18 and moving to college was an experience that was hard for me, as I struggled to become independent and be an adult. Instead of depending on God for everything I need and dealing with the issues that I was having, I sought help from a friend. However, this led to my becoming emotionally dependent on this person.

How did I survive the constant beatings and other physical and emotional abuse from both parents in my early years? Was God there? What about the sexual abuse by a high school kid when I was only ten years old? I was desperate to the point of running away from home when I was thirteen, only to be brought back to the hell in which I was living. Where was God? Oh, how I just wanted to be accepted and really loved, especially by a man. And, for 58 years, I sought earnestly for someone, anyone to show me the father love I hungered for so deeply. I got hooked on sex with men, thinking that, by pleasing them, surely I would find some degree of acceptance and love. It wasn’t much, but surely it was better than nothing - or was it? As a result of my personal compromises and desperado, I landed in jail about five times for sexual misconduct and drug use. It got to the point that I gave up and tried to take my own life, only to fail miserably. And yet, even then, though I didn’t know it, God was there preserving me - but for what, more torture? How could He possibly care for me? I was wild and very, very angry with Him and the world. I accepted Jesus into my life while I was in jail…a captive behind 13 bars of steel in solitary confinement, thinking I had finally found the answer to my deepest longings and the finish to my homosexuality, I set out with great relief and enthusiasm, only to fall back into my deep mire of sin. Had God given up on me? Would I ever find that love I felt I had been cheated from as a young boy? In my deepest despair and homelessness, I concluded it was never to be, and I sincerely tried to take my life; again I failed. It was as if God were telling me that I had a deeper death to go through than suicide could ever offer me. Years went by, and my life kept spiraling downward into what felt like a black hole. Despite my hardest efforts, I could not overcome my own sinful desires for men.