It’s Not About Me—It’s All About Him
This is the story of a woman born in 1941 to an unwed girl of fifteen, handed off to her grandparents, a lesbian over twenty years until that glorious day when Jesus Christ came to make her part of His Bride—the Bride He will come for one day or night and take her home to forever be with Him.
I cannot tell you that I was never loved, because that would be a lie. My grandparents did love me as much as they knew how. After all, they had already reared their children and there I was looking to them for what a mother and father should give.
It was nearing the end of World War II, and they were still getting rationing and so on. Things were scarce. I remember the margarine coming in plastic bags with a little yellow orange capsule to be broken and kneaded to turn the lard inside to buttery yellow. Some of it was ok; other times it was like eating salve on your bread.
Church was not an interest of my family. None of them ever went to a church. The closest I ever came to it was once as a little girl of six or seven when a lady came to our apartment to ask kids if they wanted to go to Sunday School. That only lasted about a month when my grandparents took me out of it.
My mother wanted to be known to me as my sister and never was I to be told the truth. Of course, I found out around nine or ten years of age who she was. Her step-father molested me when I was about eight or nine and I grew to hate being anywhere near him. No one ever knew, because I feared their disbelief. I was not a very truthful child and they may have killed me had I told them this. At least that is what I thought.
I had felt drawn to the same sex many times and often found myself in lust as I contemplated being in the arms of another female. By now I had developed a great hatred for males. There were many other men who tried to have their way with me sexually, even one boyfriend of my mother’s. This man had told me who my mother was as he fondled my private areas. My starvation for hugs and affection didn’t help in these situations, because in my need, I encouraged them. (This in no way excuses the actions of adult males but I wanted to tell this so the whole story could be told).
I was caught stealing at about twelve. A police woman who was talking with me told me that I was going to the detention center in Grand Rapids. I will never forget that day. Not one time was I offered the chance to speak to my grandparents. I burst into tears and was whisked away into a car and to Juvenile Detention. In court I was informed that I was to be sent to a place where I would remain for one year, a big lie.
In a matter of a couple weeks I was in a bus on my way to the Girl’s Training School in Adrian, Michigan. There would be my home for nearly three years. In that time I learned that the feelings I had experienced for my own sex was something shared with me by not a small number of other girls.
In an all girl training school a person’s hunger for affection and for someone to love them becomes the single most needed fulfillment in life, to be held and told that all would be o.k. Told that you are loved and to feel the warmth of a kiss. These were things you read about but never experienced without sneaking them.
When I first arrived at the school I learned how a person loses their privacy so completely. There were physical exams during which a "doctor" would do horrid things to me and laugh at my upset. There were matrons who had about as much empathy as a floor mop. We were locked in our rooms when not on a work detail and had to use a pot for a toilet at night. We lived in what were called cottages and these held around thirty girls in each. We lined up in the morning to empty our pots and take water back to our rooms for bathing. It was somewhat of a nightmare. On weekends there might be time for a shower.
In the three years that I spent there I had numerous close encounters with other girls. None of them wound up in bed, because we were watched very closely. There were notes and an occasional bit of kissing and fondling that went on but no sex. One thing for sure though, I was definitely turned on by the kisses and fondling. Sex came much later. I got many disciplines because of note passing and so on. I tried to run away but got scared and was caught.
There was one foster home. That turned out to be unbearable for me, and I went back to the training school again. I ran away from the foster home and wound up in jail with a lesbian who soon showed me what it was like to be loved by the same sex. It was short lived but convinced me that this was who and what I was.
I went back to the school for another year and a half. Then a most unexpected thing happened. The woman I had called “my sister” for years came to see me and said she would take me to live with her. I told her that her one time fiancee’ had told me who she really was—not my sister but my birth mother. She quickly informed me that she did not want to be called "mom" or "mother" by me. Her husband would not want me to call her that. She didn’t want it either. I went home with them, to a farm in a lovely part of Michigan.
She and her husband drank often and got into fights. This arrangement only lasted for about two years. Once, when they were fighting, he threw out at my mother, "I almost got into your kid’s pants." She just told him that he had probably scared me and that is why. To that, he hit her in the face causing a black eye and bloody nose. I yelled at him, "If you ever hit my mother again I will kill you." …He never hit her again. She let me know in no uncertain terms that she would always side with him no matter what he did. That, of course, made it perfectly clear how much I was worth to her. I joined the military.
My enlistment didn’t last long, because I got into the wrong clique, and the commander hated my choices of friends. They were lesbians. I got into an auto accident once and soon was discharged under honorable conditions.
Though my friends were lesbians I still had not had a sexual experience with any of them. There was one that was headed in that direction but not before I got out. At the time I was discharged I was only 19 yrs. old. The one person with whom I had gotten close was stationed at a base in Maryland. That is where I went upon discharge.
My life became interesting to say the least. Getting involved in the Baltimore night life, I ended up on the infamous "block". This was a section of night clubs where there were strippers—"B" girls and call girls. It was a place where anything goes.
It wasn’t long before I was dancing and doing like everyone else. (There are many a gay bar in that part of the city all within walking distance of one another). A few of the strippers were either gay or bi and got to be good friends of mine. I say "good" because at the time there were no bad people to me. At that time the mob still had a choke hold on this part of Baltimore. Having the Mafia around never upset me, because it was all a part of life. A couple of the big names in the stripping business were married to the mob.
I got partnered up with three different lesbians in the several years of my living there. Those relationships soured after a couple years, and it seemed to me that there was only heartbreak in this life. Men all seemed good for only one thing to me, and that was money. There came the day, though, when I decided to try a man. Since all of society was bent on the fact that women and men were the correct way, I figured I would give it a try.
Meeting a guy who vowed his love to me, I finally got married. I won’t spend much time on this, because it was hell to say the least. Like everything else I did in my life, it was sudden and without much real thought, and, therefore, it fell through.
I was pregnant within a very short span of time, only to find out that he was still married to a woman in New Jersey when he married me. He confessed to this when I got pregnant. I gave birth to a son whom I gave up for adoption, because I knew I was headed back to being a lesbian.
One night while out bar hopping, I met the person with whom I would spend the next seven years; she was out bar hopping as well. We danced, went to my apartment, slept together, and fell in love (or at least that is what we called it). She was still married, but for some reason she needed something else. To make a long story short, she and I spent 7+ years together.
While attending a Metropolitan Community Church, a church that panders to the homosexual, the invitation was given that anyone who desired to make Jesus their Savior could come to the altar and receive Him. (What a shock this must be to many of you reading this)! I knew that the invitation was meant for me. Along with three or four others, I went up and accepted His work on the cross as being a free gift for me, standing there repeating the sinner’s prayer, tears just flowing down my face, with my head bowed. I recall words like, "I denounce the sin in my life, Satan and his lies, and now turn my heart over to Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior from this day forward."
As my lover and I headed for home, I remembered those words, and my heart was pricked with a sense of convicting guilt. Looking over at my partner in the car, I knew something was being done that very moment in me.
She and I did not split up right away, because the Holy Spirit had to do His work in my heart. My conversion was so real, though. The fruit began to grow almost immediately. We had a quarrel during which she told me, "You are ruining my life." This was an answer to much seeking and prayer. Many were the evenings that I would drive home from my work, yelling for God to give me a sign that she and I were not to live together as lovers anymore. It was near to impossible for me to just tell her we were through. This proclamation she made was, to me, that sign from God for which I had asked.
Right after she said this, I called a Christian couple who were friends of ours and went over to their home. We prayed, and they told me that how I was living must change for…it was not pleasing to God. The best I could do at that time, because of it being winter and she and her daughter had no place to go, was to talk with her and tell her I desired to live a chaste life, and we must not sleep together anymore. She easily agreed. Again, another proof of God setting things in order.
Through the kindness and understanding of the pastor of the church I attended, we did part but not as some may split. He had agreed that since we were not in the same bed, she could stay until they found an apartment. She and her daughter finally did move, and we remained good friends for a period of time after that. She went back to work with which she was acquainted and a church of her choosing, and I pray she never went on to further lesbian relationships.
I am so thankful for Christ and His blood shed on Calvary, all done to save me. My greatest desire is to help others meet this wonderful Savior who loves them and died as much for them as for me. We do not get forgiven through anything we do. It is all dependant on our confession of knowing that Jesus paid it all. We need only to believe and receive that gift.
The Beginning in 1984:
Of many, many years of service in reaching others who struggle with same sex attraction with the saving grace of Christ.
Jan Hensley
