Coming Out of The Closet

Coming Out of the Closet!

I am very serious. But it may not be what you are thinking, so please bear with me and read carefully. Actually this process has taken quite a few years! Nearly 40! At first I didn't know that I was even hiding! And by the time I did realize it, I was fully involved in the process of coming out, which is really just coming into who one truly is! Right?

It seemed a logical, and inevitable path, of course, but it was so difficult to find the courage to risk the social rejection which I've always known this move would bring! You know, people try to be cool and hip and “tolerant”, but there are just some things that they can't seem to swallow. Especially where I come from! And especially what I am going to share!

The conservative mindsets around here are so religious, strict and limited! And really, even the so-called “liberals” don't seem any freer to think on their own – they just have a different box of paradigms in which they have gotten trapped! But so few are truly tolerant of anything which goes against their very small ideas about how life should be lived! And they seem to think that I am the “narrow minded” one! Oh, tragic irony!

Anyway, it began to be evident to me that the shallow love of my so-called “friends”, and even family members (which was apparently contingent upon my “keeping it together” by their standards and living within their self-designed, religious or liberal, cages) was not worth the effort which I had to make to sustain it! It eventually became as clear as clean glass that in order to be who I knew myself to be – the best me, which God had been years in the making – I would have to cut against the social grains of my existence and just BE!

Because, eventually, it just got so miserable hiding how I felt about everything! It got so hard to just keep quiet and pretend that I was part of their worlds! My real feelings began to seep out, like the first bubbles of a pot that is ready to boil over! At first, I was hesitant, because I had to be sure of who “that person was”, meaning that I had to be sure of what God was making me into, and what that would look like!

I am still not sure that I have all of that figured out. Also, the punishment which I received, though subtle and guarded in denial, (whenever my real feelings did bubble over, which began to happen more and more often) was enough to push me back into my cage, for a bit longer! But I knew I couldn't stay there without dying! It was becoming tighter by the minute! I was growing too quickly for this thing to hold me for long!

As of today, I have to say honestly that I am still in the process of “coming out”, of becoming the best person that I can be, with the help of God! Part of the problem was that I had to first figure out who I wasn't! So many possibilities had been dropped into my spirit, by so many influences! I had some pretty severe sexual, emotional and identity issues to be resolved! Overt sexual abuse by both men and women had twisted that aspect of my being, until I was confused into being multiple personalities!

The foremost of which was a “Dyke” type of individual! A very firm and forceful, man-hating young woman whose “nick-name” was “The Ball-stalker”! A dominating, women's libber! And an emotional spit-fire, whom all that knew her feared to cross!

The other “personality” was her extreme opposite - a shy, extremely fearful, withdrawn, severely Baptist girl, who seemed scared of her own shadow – until some civil rights issue pulled her out of that “self”!

These two fought for dominance in a semi-normal looking college student, who worked two jobs to keep a roof over her own head, and was ashamed of the 3.5 average, which was a result of working so much she didn't have the time needed to study!

But, as time went on, this struggling, mostly suicidal, college girl found something which would change her life forever! She found that the Word of God was more than a religious book! She discovered that it was truly alive, as she had heard - because one particularly desperate night, this Book came alive to her, and spoke life to her! From it she received the comfort and instruction which she so desperately needed to continue living!

From that time on she began to be solidified. She began to become something real, defined, consistent. She began to know, and to find the courage to be, herself! The extreme personalities were lain dormant. The dangerous Dyke gave up her hold, the overly-religious, fearful Baptist girl also gave way as – in their places - the college girl was revealed to be an intensely spiritual, intellectually gifted, person who really could learn to love people, even men, as God loved them!

So, after nearly 40 years of becoming this person, I have grown past the college girl, into a wife of a Godly man, and eventually the mother, steward and instructor of a fair brood of intellectual offspring! I have gained so much ground! But also, it has separated me from nearly everything and everyone who once had so much sway in my life! It has cost much, but I have gained my real self. So, here goes...coming all the way out...Who am I now?

I am a died in the blood, true blue, totally obsessed disciple of Yeshua the Messiah!!! I am grafted into His Vine, Israel the beloved! I am adopted into His family of the same name! And under His divine tutelage I have become a Truth-Seeker, and a Truth-SEER, a watchman on the walls, in the Kingdom of our Father God! I am an avid observer of life. I am objective participant in the realm of humanity, and a loyal citizen of the Kingdom of God! I have become, not a “stalker” of men, but rather a helper of mankind, as even my name, “Sandra”, indicates!

And, as such, I have come to the realization that I can no longer cow-tow any further to either of the extremes of my social existence! I can not ride the ever downwardly spiraling tide of this mixed up crazy mess which mankind has produced in their hubris! I can not go with the western mindset of so-called “Christianity”, nor can I flow with the futile tides of “political correctness” (a phrase which could NOT be more ironic, nor further from the truth!).

Nor can I return to the Pharisaic Judaism with the typical Messianic movement of today! Nor can I endure the blatantly hypocritical mess of pottage for which that first mess was traded! I am referring to - the Idolatry-infected religious profanity of the Christian Religion as it exists today! It has become a sickeningly profane mess, a very old wine-skin,whose time has come, and which God is now judging, and which His true “Church” is fleeing in growing numbers.

Finally! I am free! After all these years of struggle to grasp this reality, I am a free thinking follower of the Messiah Yeshua! I am His disciple! He is my Rabbi, my Shepherd, and my KING! I will follow Him to the grave if necessary! And I will no longer soft soap or white wash over sin, or the tragic results of pursuing a life of sin! I found deliverance from sin, even the sin of religious presumption and ritualistic bondage! I found deliverance from the confusion of the fallen nature! I have found, and am now living the High Life in the Kingdom of God!

I am now a FIRM believer in the Anointed One, and His very REAL POWER to deliver even the most confused sinner from their constraints of sinful confusion! I am a thoroughly convinced observer of His Love, His Truth, His Word, and His Anointing! I am a fully authorized representative of His Father's, OUR Father's, Kingdom of Love and Life! I am accepted in Him, the Beloved of God. And therefore I am a beloved of God and I will walk in His Authority, whether anyone likes that or not!

No one, except those who have found this freedom, could possibly grasp the joy that is found in this acceptance! Because, as I have learned the hard way, the ONLY way to an acceptance of our real self - or even the ability to recognize who we are, and what we should look like - is found in the acceptance of this Holy God! The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, King David, and Yeshua Ha Messhiach!

All of my “skeletons”, the horrific memories which I diligently buried along the way, came out of the closet as I did, and were given a decent burial, God rest them! So, with no shame of the past to haunt me, I am free to walk forward into the eternal absolutes of God without trepidation!

I am Sandra Carlton Duncan, and I enthusiastically invite all to come out of those closets of insane ideologies about who you think you are, socially acceptable or not, I beseech you break free of the crusts of tradition, and find the living Bread of Truth in Messiah - and find the true freedom and the acceptance of the beloved for which you yearn! You owe it to yourself! God made us for freedom, my brothers! Not that this freedom should become a stumbling stone for us! But that we might walk into all the Liberty in our Anointed One! Which was, after all, purchased for us at SUCH a great price!

Shalom Chavarim!

2015 June 17 SCD