Keeping The Faith
By:  Linda C. Dipman

      Two weeks ago my daughter, Christy, and I were having a conversation.  She stated
that most girls have the kind of mom who share a spa day with them, who invite them to go
get their nails done together or try out a new hairstyle.

      We both laughed at her words, because I was opposite from this kind of mom.  In fact,
my daughter ended the conversation with the statement, "Instead I get a mom who wants
to save the world.  And on top of it you dragged me into doing it too!"

      I don't know what I would do without my daughter, I trust her completely.  She edited
my book.  She edits every article I write and of course made some of the article writing
hers.  "Haunted Typewriter or God" and "The Key To The World Is Love" were her titles.  
She is also constructing my website: lovinghandsministry.com

      Christy has three children. Samuel is always reminding me that he is going to be four
very soon.  Paige just turned 2 and Sofia is 6 months.  All are very energetic and Christy
must give up sleep in order to work for me.

      Her faith in God is great and she endeavors to teach her children the same principles.
 She is all about living a Christian life and being a faithful and loving wife to her husband
and a loving and good mom to her children.  I tell her all the time that she comes from a
long line of great Christian mothers.

      You would never believe that Christy had ever experienced anything but good in her
lifetime.  Most people believe that you can't be so grounded and be such a good person if
something bad has ever happened to you.  You just had to have lived a charmed life!

      The common phrase we always hear is 'bad things always happen to bad people'.  
Yet what people think is truth is often a lie.  The real truth is that bad things happen to
good people because our world is under the rule of Satan.

      John 5:19, "We know that we belong to God even though the whole world is under the
rule of the Evil One."

      When Christy was five and attending kindergarten the worse possible thing happened
in her life.  Her parents divorced and she and her brothers became the ponds in a huge
custody battle.

      I suppose this custody fight wouldn't have been so traumatic if it weren't for the fact
that our family was so religious.  Her dad was an ordained deacon and his father was a
Baptist minister.  My own sister and her husband were in full time ministry and I our family
came from a long line of ministers and missionaries.

      Everything Christy was ever taught was about obeying God and serving in church.  
You see in 1986 divorce was a very big sin!  Yet there is a sin that is bigger than divorce
and that is the sin of being gay! I would go as far as to say that for the church it is even
bigger than murder!

      Churches preach that homosexuality is wrong!  Using Sodom and Gomorrah as a
story illustrating God's hatred of gays.  But they quietly leave out scripture that leaves out
the real reason for the destruction of these cities.

      2 Peter 2:6, "God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroying them
with fire, and made them an example of what will happen to the godless."

      The scripture specifically states that it was not about sexual sin, but about
godlessness.  Never the less churches, families, and society throw out their gay family
members because the churches skip these scriptures.  

      Because Theologians and religious historians refuse to set the record straight,
homosexuals are deprived of their children and denied justice in the courts.  They are
humiliated, persecuted, killed and despised all in the name of God.  

      Ezekiel 16:48-50, "As surely as I am the living God, the Sovereign Lord says, 'your
sister Sodom and her villages never did the evil that you and your villages have done.  
She and her daughters were proud because they had plenty to eat and lived in peace and
quiet, but they did not take care of the poor and the underprivileged.  They were proud
stubborn and did the things that I hate, so I destroyed them, as you well know.'"

      They say, love the sinner but hate the sin.  But Christy can tell you that this is not
true!  You can not love what you hate.  It is like telling Satan that he has to love God and
we all know how impossible that would be!  

      Because people have been misled by the church, everything I did as a good Christian
mother was counteracted by me falling in love with a woman.  It didn't matter how much I
loved my children or how diligent I was in teaching them about God and doing service in
my church.

      Because of false teachings, a huge tug-of-war began not just between husband and
wife, but with husband, church, family, friends and society all against me.  A battle that was
so tipped in favor of her dad that Christy struggled to love me regardless of what they said
about me.

      In fact, Christy and her brothers became so entangled in the fight for who had the
right to be custodial parent that you would have thought that they would have never had
anything to do with God ever!  Because God was the reason they were not to love their
mother.

      They were told they couldn't love me because I was living a life of sin.  They were
confused by strangers who told them how unlucky they were to have a mom who had
fallen from God's grace and chose to live an ungodly lifestyle.  From church to school to
the small town they lived in, they were constantly the center of  unwanted attention
because of their Satan possessed mother.

      Christy didn't want this kind of attention!  She just wanted her mom.  She didn't care
what the church had to say, she just wanted to live with her mom.  She didn't understand
why everyone was in such an uproar, because she saw me as the same mom who loved
her and had taken care of her since  birth.

      So you can see that her childhood was not peaceful.  She was taken away from her
mom and given to her dad.  I was given no visitation and as a result I fled with my children
and was arrested and put in jail while Christy endured being put in the hands of the SRS.  

      Christy saw her mother attacked by her father, while the pastor and a deacon
watched.  She saw her mother being stalked by church members in the name of God.  She
saw her grandparents turn their back on her mother and wish her dead.

      She was forced into counseling as a small child.  She was forced to go before a judge
and tell him who she wanted to live with.  Even after she stated she wanted to live with her
mom, the judge ignored her words.

      Time and again she was involved in one court proceeding after another while her
testimony to live with her mother was disregarded.  Whenever visitation resumed with her
mother she was interrogated by her father, councilors, and family.

      It is amazing today from the persecution my daughter endured from church, society
and family members that she came through fifteen years of childhood holding onto her
faith regardless of whether her prayers were answered or not.

      It took until my daughter was an adult and able to make up her own mind that she
began to see the mother that I really was.  A mother who loved her and wanted the best
for her and her family.  Today our bond is strong because of our mission to tell the world
the truth about God and love!