1957 - 1976: Roots and Becoming

I was born in Oklahoma City in 1957, the oldest of three children. My earliest memories are of family: crowded gatherings, Sunday dinners, and the certainty that I belonged to people who knew and loved me.

Faith was woven into that life. I grew up in a fourth-generation Nazarene family. Church wasn't simply a place we attended. It shaped how we understood God, family, responsibility, and the people we were meant to become.

But childhood held another truth. I was sexually abused. I did not have the words to explain what had happened or understand how deeply it would affect me. I only knew to carry it quietly. The love surrounding me was real, and so was the wound I kept hidden.

When I was a child, my family moved to Japan. Living in another culture widened my world and taught me that life could be understood in more than one way. When we returned to Virginia several years later, I came home with a greater awareness of people and what might exist beneath what they said or showed.

Long before I understood that I was gay or recognized my intuitive gifts, I was already learning to live between what could be seen and what remained hidden.

At sixteen, faith stopped being only what my family had given me. It became a choice and a relationship of my own.

At sixteen, I knew how to look like a joyful Christian. Inside, I was carrying insecurity, self-hatred, and parts of myself I didn’t believe could ever be accepted.

That changed at teen camp in 1974. At the altar, I encountered a love that didn’t condemn me or ask me to pretend. I wept because I felt known and safe. For the first time, Christianity wasn’t simply the faith of my parents and grandparents. I had begun my own walk with Christ.

Later that year, our church teen choir traveled from Virginia to Florida. During a stop at a church in South Carolina, we gathered at the altar to pray after rehearsing.

As I knelt there, I felt a presence surround me. Then I heard two voices.

“He’s mine.”

“No, he’s Mine.”

I was terrified. I knew I was in the presence of God, but I also felt the struggle over the direction my life would take. Then God said, “I will use your talents to build My kingdom.”

I saw myself speaking before thousands of people and reaching them through the words I was given. I assumed God was calling me to become a preacher. Part of me was excited. Another part felt exposed, frightened, and completely unworthy.

So I backed away.

For the next eighteen years, I lived much of my faith quietly. I went to church and believed in God, but I was afraid to speak openly about what I had heard. The call didn’t disappear. I simply tried to live where it couldn’t ask too much of me.

Looking back, I can see that the call wasn’t wrong. My understanding of it was incomplete. What I thought had to become a pulpit would slowly become a pen. God had begun forming His scribe long before I was ready to call myself one.

Before I understood that, I would marry, become a father, build a career, and try to live inside a life that looked right from the outside.