Our YOB retreats are always wonderful present-day reminders, and perhaps even pointers, toward such future refuge. A chance to immerse ourselves in brotherly love each year: face to face, shoulder to shoulder, chest to chest, eye to eye, soul to soul.

I've been rereading "Unwanted" for therapy, and it continues to reveal my uncomfortable reflection – all of it, all of me. It often feels like fluorescent lights buzzing overhead at midnight. And yet Stringer's premise encourages me: sexual brokenness almost paradoxically revealing paths to healing.

For this first entry on masculinity, I want to share my experiences with masculine leadership, including how the lack of positive, consistent examples of masculine leadership has affected how I interact with and think about the men who are supposed to lead me.

How did we go from Jonathan and David to heaven and hell? What exactly happened between us?  I've replayed every variable in my head over and over: I was too obsessive, I was too much, I was never enough, he was never enough, it's all his fault, it’s all my fault, he caught feelings.

I learned that it wasn't safe for me to talk about or process through any of this struggle. Not at this church. And that is just what I did for the rest of high school. I didn't talk about my sexuality with anyone at that church again.

It's no secret that the LGBT+ community has a complicated history with the Christian church. This culture war has bled into the church for decades, resulting in those who experience same-sex attraction in their congregations to feel uncared for, unloved, and at worst, excommunicated from the church community. These experiences create soul wounds.

I met a friend named Rick at my first meeting of the Christian Student Ministry. We talked briefly at the meeting, and then more the next morning over breakfast. From those earliest moments with Rick, I felt all the feelings of a crush – though I didn't realize it at the time. While I obviously felt a physical attraction to this guy, I also felt an emotional, mental, and spiritual attraction that even now is difficult to explain.

I entered my first YOBBERS retreat hoping for renewal out of this weekend. But would I really get that renewal? Would I see a refresh of strength – mentally, physically, spiritually?

I found myself getting sucked into a world of fantasy. Porn was way better than watching some blockbuster: I could still be with guys without actually being with them. After all, I never cared about those guys anyway. It was all about me and getting off. The more I watched porn, the more I was hooked.

Perhaps it was the touch of melancholy in me that many other "Side B" Christians also feel, or simply being a disabled man, or maybe even a combination of the two – the fact that I have often felt both a physical and mental peace listening to classical music. Whatever it was, my soul felt ministered to in a previously unknown way.

You know, after fifteen years of blogging about gay things and masculine things and all the other intermingled, messy faith things, I often feel like I've run out of stories to tell here. Gay kisses, wet dreams, fetishes – what on earth is there left to say?? Ah, but then I wake up one day and suddenly remember that time another "Side B" guy from a Facebook group asked if he could do something to my genitals. Ah, yes – a new story to tell. Glory be.

I spent most of my twenties trying my best to be straight. I dated women and watched ESPN and prayed and prayed for the gay to go away. I don't suppose there was anything wrong with all that. But at some point I had to acknowledge the reality that God doesn't always remove challenges. He always works through them, though.

I board my first plane with another YOBBER, North Carolina-bound from Houston. I know exactly where I’m going, yet it is a new adventure all the same. Perhaps I should say, "I know what to expect where I’m going." Memories of the previous year’s YOB camp retreat replay in my head -- more static around the details than there used to be, though the feelings surrounding them remain unchanged. Chaotic. Flabbergasted. Humbled. Healed. I have to pull myself back to the present and prepare my heart for what may be a whole new set of feelings this year. I have to prepare my heart for growth.

"New growth" was the theme of this, my first YOB retreat; slightly ironic as fall was slowly putting the world to sleep. The sun felt defiantly hot that first day, beating down on tall trees that simultaneously clung to summer green while shedding autumn red and gold. I was exhausted from a stressful week and travel delays. Now I faced a weekend of interacting with virtual strangers. Literally. Aside from a handful whom I had met in person, my fellow YOBBERS were tiny faces on a screen. I had discovered YOB some months prior. I was desperate, starving for some kind of connection with other men who understood my journey.

When you are 60, you'd think that you no longer experience growth spurts. It's more recognizing life's process of devolution and slow decay, at least on the outside. This year’s YOBBERS retreat was not about expecting profound change, or gaining insights into myself and God that I would carry home; rather, it was seizing an opportunity to meet a group of men with whom I had dialogued, listened to, and only seen in postage stamp-sized pictures on Zoom – men of faith who share a common struggle to live the sexual ethic of the Gospels as they understand it.

Fours are emotional creatures. We feel things. We feel things deeply and often. A leaky faucet doesn't do the metaphor justice; my heart feels more like a fire hydrant turned loose on a city street. Handling the hydrant has challenged me my whole life, but especially these last few years. I've seen some success. And I also recognize how much room I have yet to grow.

How do I deal with unmet sexual desire? It's a question which led me to ask, what is my sexual desire? Of course, "sexual desire" is a category with a lot of things in it. "There's a lot of different fish in that bucket," I told myself. But let's not call it a bucket. Let's call it an aquarium so all the fish have plenty of room to swim around, and so we can get a good look at them.

Here's one vocabulary term I've taken away from therapy: euphoric recall. I'd never heard that phrase until last year, and it gives language to this nebulous internal struggle I've faced since my first bout with pornography at 19.

For so many years I thought I was just dirty, lustful, and awful for thinking all these terrible sexual thoughts. I was filled with constant shame because the sexually intrusive thoughts kept coming. The realization that I can actually, with practice, redirect my own thoughts, is more freeing than I can write.

Phillip Henry died yesterday at 29 years of age. That was the short, somber text message on my phone. No! Not Phillip! I thought. He was such a close friend. That last thought was only a half-truth. My friendship with Phillip had only just begun, and I'd had such hopes for it. Now, he was gone.