OneByOne hears testimony about how God can bring healing to people’s lives
Craig M. Kibler, The Layman Online , June 20, 2006
217th General Assembly
Birmingham, Ala. BIRMINGHAM — A man who had struggled with homosexuality told more than 100 people packed into a meeting room at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex that, “God brought healing into my life in the body of Christ.”
Brad Grammer is the executive director of Hope and New Life Ministry, an Exodus referral ministry in Indianapolis, Ind. The ministry provides discipleship and pastoral care for men struggling with homosexuality, heterosexual addiction and the effects of childhood sexual abuse.
Speaking during the OneByOne luncheon Monday afternoon, Grammer said that up until he entered college, he had been struggling with his sexual identity, in addition to depression and anxiety. Twenty-three years ago, he said, his life was at a crossroads. “In my mind, I could either commit suicide or give God one more chance to change my life and bring it meaning.”
“I was feeling lost and lonely,” he said. “I remember sitting in my bathroom holding a bottle of pills and wondering if there was a way out of this mess. What had led me to this stage? What could have contributed to this state?”
Grammer said that he came from a loving home, a Christian home. “My parents were not workaholics or alcoholics or any kind of ‘oholics,'” he said. He said his relationship with his parents was good, but they didn’t talk, and that was particularly the case with his father.
“I always wanted a father who would love me and spend time talking to me.” Grammer said he remembered when he was seven years old and going to the store with his father to get ice cream. “All the way there and back, we didn’t say a word,” he said. “In understanding child development now, I understand that silence always communicates rejection.”
Out of that desire to have a father who demonstrably loved him, he said that, “I wanted boys to think of me as a friend and think that I was the greatest friend in the world.”
During his grade school years, Grammer said most of his playmates were girls and that, to be popular with boys, people had to be good at sports. Because he wasn’t, he said they called him “sissy” and “fag.” The rejection continued at “recess and in gym classes,” Grammer said, and he was made fun of and picked on all the time. “I became incredibly lonely and depressed,” he said, and that eventually turned into a hatred for men.
Grammer emphasized that he hadn’t had any “major traumas” in his life, but was looking for “a father and mother who could show that they loved me.” Instead, Grammer said, he developed “a live feeling no one loved me. I desperately wanted not just a friend, but also someone who would make me feel good, someone to complete me. I was desperately lonely and isolated from my peers.”
His struggles continued in college. At first, he said he thought the new environment would help him overcome his struggles but, after about a year, the depression came back. He said he began to wonder about the purpose of his existence. Grammer said he “came to a crisis point when I was 20. I hated who I was.”
He said he decided to commit his life to Christ and follow Him. “God really intervened in my life. He met my needs for love and the affirmations of a male. I was able to overcome my hatred of men.”
Although it was a 10-year process, he said there was a complete change in his sexual desires from homosexuality to heterosexuality. “I experienced a complete change in my sexual desires,” Grammer said.
And “on Aug. 14, I’ll celebrate my 13th wedding anniversary with my wife.” “God brought healing into my life in the body of Christ,” he said.