Critical Decision

“Mum, I want to talk to you,” your daughter says as she walks into your room. You are picking up the clothes from the laundry basket and folding them. You stop automatically and stare at her. Since she became thirteen, she hadn’t said those words to you. The teen years were very difficult.  The cave man years as the books say.

“What’s the matter dear?” you say, patting the space on the bed beside you.

She sits ever so gracefully, a beautiful girl of fifteen.

“Mum, this is very difficult for me to say. I have struggled with this for some time. I have prayed about it. But it seems there is nothing I can do to change it.”

A sense of foreboding washes over you and you grip her hand. “What is it dear? You can tell me?”

“Mum, I t-think I might be gay.”

“What?!” you give a muted scream.

“I just discovered it a few months ago, mum. I like girls.”

Her eyes had already filled and her hand was on her face before you realized that you had involuntarily slapped her.

“Tilewa, I’m sorry,” you say helplessly.

“Mum, I thought you would understand that’s why I told you. There’s nothing you can do about it  mum. It’s the way I am,” she says softly and walks out of the room.

You are reeling from the shock of what she has told you and after you spend the next hour wondering what you could have done to contribute to the catastrophe or what you could have done to avert it.  But after another half-hour, it is clear to you. You have to do something, but what? Beat the lesbianism out of her? Take her for deliverance sessions? Give her a good talking to(or maybe shouting upon)?  Go to the top of a mountain and fast and pray for seven days? Take her to see a therapist? Prevent her from seeing or having any female friends? Whatever you do, you don’t want to alienate her. Her coming to meet you shows that she has reposed some sort of confidence in you and you don’t want to lose that. You don’t want her sneaking around and hiding things from you. What are you going to do? Your daughter’s soul is at stake.

P.S: With the way the world is going these days, homosexuality appears to be on the increase. We pray this doesn’t happen but these are real issues. How do you deal with someone who comes to you and tell you he/she might be gay? What active steps do you take?

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