Heather and Ryan sit down (part 2) with Shannon Kahn on how God has worked through his own life.

Shannon has dealt with sexual identity issues growing up and has dealt with marriage and divorce.  Male influences in his life were extremely hurtful, abusive, or dealt with sexual abuse growing up, so didn’t want to be a male. Almost all the men on both sides of his family have dealt with alcoholism. Anger went along with alcoholism with most of those adult males. Doesn't remember being told "I love you" much growing up. Didn’t have a good view of what it meant to be a man.  Didn’t want to be that type of person what he had seen. In his  head he didn't want to be a man like that, but also knew he didn't want to be a women. Had mostly girls as friends because they were safe, the guys his age were also that way so wasn’t comfortable being around them.  That all shaped his difficulty with sexual identity. Sexually abused when he was young and introduced to porn at an early age.  Called gay during middle school, because he was different, didn't fit into the normal. 

Where you in church circles at that time? Parents dropped them off at church but it was pretty conservative. He didn’t remember hearing about salvation. Just tried to do good things and be a good person.  Always had a basis of understanding that there was a God and he knew that that was not how God created him. There was always something to prevent him from crossing the line. The struggle was always in his head than external.

How did you work through that? He eventually saw what other father figures looked like in a healthy way with other families as he got older and that changed his view. He got to see other family dynamics and that helped him to heal and grow. And also to be around community. It is crazy the power of influence. What you see is what you know. 

Was saved his senior year of high school. Went to Creation; that was the first time he remembesr hearing the Gospel message. The assumptions that we make as Christians are so powerful and harmful. There was a constant that he knew God didn’t create him that way. As believers there is always something that we have to deny ourselves of.  If we did everything our human nature wanted it would be disaster.

How could have the church helped? Doesn't  remember being in environments where sexual identity was actually spoken about.  A lot of guys don’t want to talk to other guys about it. The enemy is winning when we don’t talk about it.  It is so easy to isolate and believe that you are the only one going through this. 

Resources:
Wounded Heart,  book and workbook by Dan B. Allender

Joe Dallas, author, has written several books that can be helpful.

Every Mans Battle, by Stephen Arterburn, Fred Stoeker, Mike Yorkey

 Be real, Be open. You are not alone in what you are going through.