“Only Path”

By Trevor Lewis

It was the summer of 1997, and a splendid summer it was. I had been attending a prominent Adventist college, basking in learning, polishing my professional skills and status. I never expected to fall in love.

I met Steve just two weeks before the end of the academic session. From the onset, I knew he was a wonderful Christian man. But I didn’t know it was possible to fall so totally and completely in love. I felt very much like the country song, “Never been caught talkin’ to the man in the moon.”

I’m an “innocent” in many ways. I had been married to Marsha for 22 years, and never slept with another woman in all that time. I wish I could say the same about all the men in my life!

Now I realized I had never been in love in my life. I love Marsha but have not been “in love” with her. Nor had I ever been in love with any of the men. This realization caused me to confront the gay issue, and for the first time I felt good about being gay. I started to take my Christianity with me, even when I went into the bars. Shame on me!

I had trusted no one so much as I trusted Steve. I let down all the walls of my heart, and he did, too. We were not two souls, but one soul. Five hundred miles apart.

One day I could stand it no longer. I packed my clothes and left Marsha to be with Steve. I had done nothing like this before! We began a life together, only to be confronted with a “wonderful” thing called conscience, both Steve’s and mine. He could not live with the thought that he was breaking up my marriage. I would not let him violate his conscience. How do you separate two souls? Anguish… despair… even of life….

The only promise Steve and I ever made to each other was that we would, at all costs, do nothing that would prevent us from making heaven our home. We wanted an eternity of being together, doing the “Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer” thing in heaven, visiting all those planets, and making love in a very real heavenly sense. Forever. This was something we just could not sacrifice. And violating conscience was one thing that would do just that.

I went back to Marsha. She is a wonderful woman. She knows. My kids are in college now. I am broken-hearted. I am the loneliest man on earth. I am drenched in tears.

God has closed the doors to Steve and me, at least for now. Can I trust my Savior? I hope I can. Life on earth remains to be lived out. An empty shell kind of life is not much fun, but I see myself healing.

Trevor Lewis is a pseudonym.