Jul 24, 2023
I’ll Go With You - Intro
“Sandi told me you and her had a good talk.”
“Sandi told me you and her had a good talk.” It was 1996, I had just returned from our annual college camp out. Looking back I think it’s hilarious that we called ourselves Chi Alpha even though weren’t an official Chi Alpha group. I was attending New Life in Marysville having decided to go to this church based Bible college after visiting Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s funny how three days in Tulsa can help you hear the Lord tell you to return to California.
New Life had been in revival for the past ten years. At the time I arrived the church was running around 800 in a small community called Linda just over the bridge from Marysville. Filled with blue collar workers, former drug addicts and reformed inmates New Life was a church located on the fringe of society. It ministered and served the broken. It walked where Jesus walked and saw the fruit. New Life was lead by the great man of God, David Hood, who was larger than life to the many who called him Pastor. Pastor Hood just didn’t bear fruit, he bore fruit that remained. Several of our churches within the NCN District and beyond are a part of his legacy. Rodney and Sandi Waters were a young couple with a three year old daughter and they were New Life’s Chi Alpha pastors.
It was my first time away from home and they had now become my second family. I didn’t know anything else besides family and I could be found sitting on their couch, eating at their dinner table and tagging along with them daily. During our college age, “Chi Alpha” camp out I had confided in Sandi that I struggled with same-sex attraction. She thought I was teasing since I’m a big joker. I’ll never forget her response, “What? No way . . . But you wear earrings and paint your toenails.” We still laugh at her response to this day. I’ll never forget how nervous I was. I literally thought my heart was going to beat out of my chest. It was 1996, no body was talking about this type of thing in the church and if they did they were usually extremely condemning. I remember hearing preachers on TV mention it but never in a redemptive fashion, only condemnation. I remained locked in the devastating tension of my sexuality not reconciling with my faith. I would lift my hand with an unspoken prayer request all through my teenage years in my youth group, wishing that someone would one day unlock the door to this prison I found myself in.
I thought for sure Rodney and Sandi were going to send me back home and never let me play with their three year old daughter Haley anymore. Instead, they loved me even more. “I don’t really know how to help you.” Rodney said, “But I know someone who can. His name is Bob, he’s a counselor in Yuba City. If you want me to, I’ll go with you.” Rodney didn’t know it but he said the words I had been longing to hear. I already knew he couldn’t help me. I was convinced that no one could take away my emotional desires to connect with a female and while I had never acted out sexually I would spend years wandering from one emotionally dependent relationship to another trying meet a deep need.
I’ll go with you is a phrase that families use. Family doesn’t let you face hardship and tragedy alone. Family says, “If you’re in prison, I’m in prison too.” That day I had no clue the journey I would take and how influential Rodney and Sandi would be in my life. All I could see was my brokenness but they saw potential. This wouldn’t be the last time someone within my AG family would see my potential and would “go with me” but it was the start of trusting and believing that I needed others in order to survive. I love the first part of the verse Psalm 68:8, “He places the lonely in families.” While I am alone I’ve never struggled with debilitating loneliness because I have a family that continues to go with me.
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