Secrets

A ministry colleague & friend of mine wrote this great article with the working title “I’ve Got a Secret” (it had a much longer title when published!).

Imagine what it would be like to be free of the fear that someone might discover our secrets. Imagine what the world would see if it saw the Church being real, and saw the powerful presence of God as the church worshipped in total honesty with hearts unencumbered by secrets. Imagine how many marriages might be saved and addictions diverted and damage contained if we shared our struggles sooner rather than later.

This article really hit home for me personally. I walked away from reading it asking myself how is it that we can go through such difficult things (for me, not just same-sex attraction, but an eating disorder & self-injury), and yet with today’s trials & struggles, I’m still tempted to hide them until I have them all figured out? I wonder at what point in my life, if ever, I’ll feel comfortable just saying, in the appropriate context, what I’m dealing with.

You think I’d have this figured out by now! I definitely need to think on this more.

Testimony

My testimony went well; it was well-received, and I got a lot of positive feedback.

Jimmy Evans of Marriage Today
spoke after me about many good things, including “The Fig Leaf Conspiracy”, which he has written a book on.

A couple of his thought-provoking points:
The devil has corrupted our understanding of sex.
The devil left man alone until he got married. He uses our sexuality to pervert our relationships.

Get the book:)

I really wanted to goo to Randy’s workshop, but we needed to come back to the room for a quick diaper change & baby refuel. I sent one of my ministry friends in my place. My workshop is at 1:30. I’ll let you know how it goes later.

Coming Out

I’m taking a short break from our preparations to share something that has been on my heart for a few days.

Some of you know me as friend, cousin, family member, singer, songwriter, worship leader, random blogger, crunchy treehugger, spinach-chugging cook, gentle hippie mom, food enthusiast, minister, encourager, pray-er.

What you may not know is that I am what some people refer to as “ex-gay”.

You may have figured this out long ago if you clicked on some of the links on my blog. Or maybe my recent posts about the upcoming conference gave it away.

The reason I’ve been hesitant to bring this up is – well, there are quite a few. But there are 2 main reasons.

1. This is not an “ex-gay” blog. My purpose for starting this blog was to talk about my life, which of course involves the ministry that I do & am very passionate about, but that’s not the only thing, or even the main thing, that I wanted to talk about.

2. I don’t like putting that out there as the 1st thing people know about me.

That may sound as if I’m ashamed of my past or my present. No, I’m not ashamed, though I wish sometimes that I had made different choices. The problem with sharing with people what I do for ministry is that they jump to conclusions based on it. I won’t dive too deep into that, but I am many things, and the fact that I was gay-identified for a decade is just one of many things that has shaped on some level who I am today.

I’m bringing this up now because I may be live-blogging from the conference. And I figured it was as good a time as any 🙂

Really, I just want people to know me as Brenna Kate Simonds, not based on some label and the baggage it carries. I tell people when they ask about the ministry that I’m really just an average person. I don’t have an agenda; I just help people who want my help.

End of story 🙂

If you didn’t know this about me and it bothers you on some level, I hope you will give me a chance. I really am just an ordinary person who serves an extraordinary God.

My Book, Smoothies, & Life

I was inspired by one of my friends in Exodus who recently signed a book deal that I should be more consistent in working on my book. He said he was working on it for a year before he got picked up by a publisher. So yesterday morning, while Bear napped on my lap, I worked on my book. I already have a loose intro written, as well as an outline of about 18 chapters, some of which may eventually be cut, depending on the format I choose for the final version. I went through various talks I’ve given during my days doing campus ministry with Chi Alpha, as well as Exodus, & articles & devotionals I’ve written and pulled information from those, cutting & pasting them into the appropriate chapters. I ended up with over 50 pages of material! So that felt good to make all that progress 🙂

I also just really enjoyed reading over some of my old talks & teachings. I really struggled with those early talks, whereas now I’m much more comfortable preaching & teaching. But even though I struggled with writing & giving them, some of them had important things to say – if I do say so myself.

Yesterday, I was out of spinach, but in an effort to maintain my green smoothie streak, I used broccoli & kale as my greens. Um, let’s just say I don’t recommend it, unless you have a more powerful blender than I do. It was so thick it took me several hours to drink it.