A New Life Begins

Newly married life is exciting.

I remember during week #1 that I actually drove away from my office and left my carpooler stranded. She was a good sport…realizing that I was that newly married guy – the newly married gay guy!

Yes, in those early weeks, I worked through all of my fears. To myself I said, I can do this. My pastor even told me that as a man with gay inclinations, all I really had to do was to experience the love of a good woman.

“This experience will serve as a ‘reset button’ for your sexual development,” he said confidently. “You’ve just stalled out and need to be jump-started. You’ll see…you’ll be fine!”

He was much older than me. Gee, he has to know about these things. His gray hair told me that life had taught him much. On top of this, he was a minister!

He was wrong.

In our early days, “Lovey” was the church’s Day Care Director and its Minister of Christian Education. Our honeymoon lasted only two days. We were married on Saturday, and she had to be at work on Tuesday Morning….early!

We got home that Monday and went to her parents house to open wedding presents. It was like Christmas! Presents covered the piano and were neatly stacked all around it. It seemed to take hours to open everything. Then, we said our goodbyes and loaded everything into the old yellow corolla and headed back to our new house – the old church parsonage next door to the church. (The pastor lived across town in a much newer and more elegant parsonage.)

Our home was a house that when you looked at it from the street, it leaned. Really. When the cold winter winds blew, every curtain in the house moved.

Summer came and we went to the Caribbean. “Lovey” who was a credentialed minister, used this time to relax from her job, and to also preach at a host of meetings. One night she preached in a big revival tent, complete with tropical mosquitoes. If you’re old enough, picture Kathryn Kuhlman in a jungle.

Another day we preached at a house church and went home with the pastor for dinner. I saw a lake that looked nice to explore on the property. When I mentioned this to the pastor, he advised against going near it.

“Why?”, I inquired.

“Crocodiles,” was the answer.

On the way back to where we stayed that evening, we came upon some roadkill. A truck had killed a crocodile…and there it was….dead, beside the road.

I wasn’t used to any of this:

• married to a female minister;
• traveling to foreign lands;
• roadkill that happened to be reptillian; and,
• being a gay married man.

Yes, my life was going to be interesting.