TESTIMONIES |
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They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Revelation 12:11
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 I sold my soul to “the god of this world”. He had the face of an angel. He said I could have it all. I traded the truth for lies. I followed my deceitful heart. I was crowned prince, dressed in Burberry and flown to New York, Los Angeles and Miami. The house music was spellbinding. I chatted up celebrities. I was ushered to the front of long lines and through the doors of exclusive clubs.
On September 11, 2001, I woke up out of a drunken stupor and turned on the TV. Immediately I started crying. It reminded me that the Lord is coming back in judgment (Matthew 24:37-39). Having no peace, I was terrified. For work, I moved from Pittsburgh to Boston to Washington, DC and then back to Pittsburgh. My gay life peaked in the bigger cities and then slowed down in Pittsburgh where gay life was less distracting. I was alone with my thoughts. Cursing and screaming at my family, I had pushed away those who would not actively endorse my lifestyle. One day on Facebook, Christians tried to tell me that I needed to repent. I viciously attacked them. I hated the church.
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 The word Jesus stuck in my throat like an elephant tusk; no matter how hard I choked, I couldn't hack it out. Those who professed the name commanded my pity and wrath. As a university professor, I tired of students who seemed to believe that "knowing Jesus" meant knowing little else. Christians in particular were bad readers, always seizing opportunities to insert a Bible verse into a conversation with the same point as a punctuation mark: to end it rather than deepen it.
Stupid. Pointless. Menacing. That's what I thought of Christians and their god Jesus, who in paintings looked as powerful as a Breck Shampoo commercial model. As a professor of English and women's studies, on the track to becoming a tenured radical, I cared about morality, justice, and compassion. Fervent for the worldviews of Freud, Hegel, Marx, and Darwin, I strove to stand with the disempowered. I valued morality. And I probably could have stomached Jesus and his band of warriors if it weren't for how other cultural forces buttressed the Christian Right. The surround sound of Christian dogma comingling with Republican politics demanded my attention.  It's funny that they still use our picture to represent same sex and "love". To be clear, Ana (Anacleta Paredes) and I broke up because we found something greater than this and that is Jesus Christ.
Just a little background - Ana and I dated for 6 years. Yes, we were in love but after a while, we started to feel empty. The relationship couldn't satisfy me anymore and I was always mad at her, blaming her for all the things I was feeling. Thinking we needed a spark, we tried to spice up our relationship by trying different drugs. Sure, we were happy when we were high, but after the high was gone, the emptiness was still left there. We both got depressed, and Ana even had EXTREME anxiety attacks because of the drugs. It reached the point when I wanted to kill myself. I knew I needed help and I didn't know who else to talk to--and that's when I reached out to Jesus. I didn't know what I was saying and "praying for" but the words just came out. I surrendered to Him fully and repented for all my sin.  Since my childhood I was somewhat effeminate. I didn't understand that time why I was like this... but that hurt me a lot because some of the boys laughed at me because of that. So I couldn't go outside to be among other boys. I always stayed at my home. When I was 8 years old my father sent me to his sister's house for good education because there wasn't any good school in my village. There I became so lonely and I suffered from home sickness. I missed my family very much there. However I became a good student in my study there and that's why the boys at my school didn't laugh at me. They respected me there because I was a good student.
There was someone who's like a brother to me in my neighbourhood there. He was older than me. We were friends. Because of my effeminate and shy nature, he used me in sexual ways for a month. At that time I didnt know anything about sex but somewhere in my heart I felt that it was wrong. So I started to ignore him. He always tried to get hold of me to use me for his sexual fantasies and that's why I stopped going out. I left home only when I had to go to school or to a different direction. A year after, one of my distant relatives tried to rape me while we were sharing the bed. Somehow I escaped. These incidents in my life led me to homosxeual feelings. Growing up, I had some feelings for the opposite sex too but the feelings for the same sex were stronger and the latter overcame the first.  When I was a boy, I was sexually molested and abused for many years by older men. The abuse started when I was 6 years old the same time my father left my mother and I. Then my mother came to United States to work, leaving me in the care of my two great aunts. At this time I began to feel same sex attractions. When I got older, I became involved with older homosexuals and bisexual men. At the age of sixteen I started to identify as been a female and began dressing as a female. Then at the age of 35, I met a man who I thought was a woman. We spent a great deal of time together. A few months later I was on my way to becoming a transgender woman. Like my friends, I was attending support groups that helped me to become psychologically prepare for the transition from male to female.
Time passed by and I was happy with the changes. My personality was different. However, as the time went by, I became depressed. I was never able to be happy. My relationships were unfulfilling. So it was all in vain. At one point, I was so depressed and lonely that I wanted to kill myself. Later I fell deathly ill of HepC with cirrhosis of the liver because the life-style I have being living. The doctors informed me that there was nothing they can do to help me. At this point I became bitter and very angry with God because I asked him many times to remove the same sex attraction from me and it never happened.  Two years have passed so far and the Lord was helping me and disciplining me. Before that, I was just a human bound with evil and thrown in its deepest pit.
Ever since I was a child i suffered from evil for I was sexually molested. Moreover, I grew up during war times and my country Lebanon was collapsing.. and I was collapsing along. At home, i used to feel so lonely, usual and weird. At the age of 4, I lost my father and didn’t have the chance to know him well. Oh how often I threw myself over his bed, hoping he’d come and embrace me, wishing I’d be able to cry out and express the fear, terror and unease I felt toward my defiled body. How I needed to express how disturbed my mind was as I was so ignorant of my situation.  Becket Cook was sipping champagne at a Fashion Week after-party in Paris when the thought hit him: “Is this what I’m going to do for the rest of my life?” He looked around at the sea of beautiful, accomplished, air-kissing people surrounding him and suddenly felt so alone, terrified, and empty that he left the party early.
As a Hollywood production designer, Cook was living a lifestyle most people only read about in gossip tabloids. He received invites to movie premieres and fancy ceremonies such as the Oscars and the Golden Globes. He schmoozed at elite parties and luncheons at A-list celebrities’ homes. And yet, all the noise and glamour were losing their luster. As a gay atheist, Cook had enough of a Catholic upbringing in Texas to know homosexuality and God were incompatible, and giving up his gay identity felt impossible and unnatural. |
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