September 26, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Lisa Moeller, 35, began having what she thought was a nervous breakdown. Every night she found herself after work not just crying, but uncontrollably sobbing from someplace deep within. Exactly over what, she did not know. What she did know is that for weeks on end she could do nothing to stop herself.

It was October 2009. Having just ended a tumultuous four year relationship with another woman, Lisa thought that she should have been content with her life. But she could not convince herself to become excited about the prospect of new horizons. She suspected that there was something terribly wrong with her life, but, like a dreamer caught in the midst of an ominously dark nightmare, she could not deliver herself from whatever it was that tormented and plagued her.

What Lisa did not know was that something dramatic was about to happen to her that would dry up her tears and change her life forever.

Out-of-the closet lesbian

Up until this point, for her entire adult life, Lisa had lived as a out-of-the closet lesbian. She had fully embraced what she thought was her natural lesbian sexual identity. She had been through eight relationships with other women. She had a reputation as a party animal and as someone who livened things up. She had seen the inside of a jail a few times, was a heavy smoker, and had been addicted to drugs for years.

But Lisa’s lifestyle had not always been this way. As a small child, Lisa remembers wearing “frilly dresses, bobby socks, and patent leather shoes”. Her hair had been long, curly, and decorated with long flowing ribbons. People had once considered her a pretty, attractive girl.

But multiple sexual assaults from a male neighbor before her tenth birthday wreaked spiritual and emotional havoc on the little girl, dreadfully twisting her inner beauty, innocence, and purity. Shortly after being violated, Lisa began to trade her feminine dress and appearance for something more masculine. She cut her hair short and felt more comfortable wearing sneakers and jeans. She did not want to look like a pretty little girl anymore.

Her friends began to ostracize her. As Lisa moved through her teenage years, she made it look like she was having a good time with “binge drinking, sex, or egging someone’s house”, but her loneliness consumed her. She felt that she would “never be accepted”.

“The only reason it looked like I was having a good time was because no one knew the real me,” wrote Lisa in her testimony to LifeSiteNews.com. “If they ever found out, they would hate me. As a matter of fact, I should hate myself. What kind of freak was I? Was I born this way or did I do something to cause this?”

“No one would ever truly love me”

As a teenager, Lisa convinced herself that “no one would ever truly love me. Not even God.” Feeling that she was “boxed in” with nowhere to go and no one to talk to, Lisa attempted to take her life.

“I was all alone. I would never know love anyway, at least not without causing a dreadful effect,” she said. “I would have this secret for the rest of my life and the shame would accuse me day and night. I would have to be a phony to survive. Even worse, I would have to be with a man.”

Caving into despair, Lisa swallowed a bottle of pills to free herself from the black nightmare that her life had become. As she emptied the bottle, she embraced the nausea and dizziness that followed as a “sort of release”. But Lisa’s plan was thwarted through the intervention of a friend and she was rushed to hospital where doctors pumped her stomach, saving her life. Through the induced vomiting, the anxious commands of the doctors, and the inquisitive looks from the staff, Lisa remembers that she “never felt so happy to be alive as I did in that moment.” She was “truly grateful” that she had been “given another chance”.

“My revenge was to be whoever I chose to be”

Lisa’s attempt to take her own life changed her attitude towards everything and everyone. She began to evolve into someone who was more “resilient and hard-edged”, someone who could “endure criticism and hand it right back”, someone who would “fight for herself at any cost, unmoved by the scathing opinions of those around me.” She became confrontational by default.

“If I felt I was being nipped at the ankle, I went directly for the throat. Better to put someone in their place immediately than run the risk of being intimidated,” she remembers.

“The world had delivered a huge punch to my self-esteem, my sanity, and my emotions. And my revenge was to be whoever I chose to be, however unethical, immoral, or unorthodox it may seem. Certainly God would understand. He could see I had to protect myself or fall apart. I would spend the next few years trying to convince myself of that.”

As Lisa moved to adulthood, she projected onto herself a masculine identity. “I insisted that every girlfriend I had be incredibly feminine in dress, mannerisms, and identity. Because of this, I never dated a lesbian, but only bisexual or bi-curious women, who undoubtedly felt more comfortable with my manly image.”

In all of her relationships with other women, Lisa played the dominant male role, paying the bills at shops and restaurants, holding open doors, buying expensive gifts, managing the upkeep and repair of the house, and catering to her partner’s “every wish or dream”.

“I became somewhat of a central figure in the household, and with that came many of the responsibilities that are predominantly handed to men,” she said. “If there was a noise in the house late at night, everyone would crowd behind me. If a bill wasn’t paid on time, everyone would look at me. If the AC was on the fritz, there was a leak in the roof, the car broke down, everyone turned to me. I found this incredibly uncomfortable and sometimes downright scary.”

On the flip side of this, Lisa remembers being “extremely controlling” of her partners in that she would not allow them to wear masculine clothing, go out at night alone, carry heavy objects, or have any male friends who were not gay.

“Because I was in no way abusive, and provided for her every need, they typically had very few issues with this type of radical behavior, and almost always considered it to be for their own safety and comfort. In most cases, they would even brag to friends and family that they never lifted a finger, and that became nourishment to my fragile ego”.

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Healed by God’s grace

But in the midst of her lesbian lifestyle, Lisa had an “unsettled feeling that it just wasn’t enough”. Through her depression and tears it began to dawn on her that she had a “God-shaped hole in my heart, and was wise enough to know nothing but Him would fill it.” She would pray: “God, please don’t let this be it for me,” all the time thinking her prayer futile since she “never believed in mixing my lifestyle and the Truth of God into one”.

But God, who honors the deepest desires of the human heart, must have heard the broken woman’s prayer.

As Lisa was on her way to Spokane in the summer of 2010 to collect signatures for a state ballot at a gay pride parade, she experienced a supernatural moment of God’s healing grace that turned her homosexual life upside-down.

“One night in my hotel, I went to bed completely homosexual. My mannerisms, dress, body language, etc., were all very masculine. I hated men, angry at every one for the abuse that I had suffered by a neighbor when I was a child”, she revealed. “When I awoke, there was a presence in the room that I cannot find the words to completely explain. It was a peace I had never experienced before”.

Lisa was shocked the following morning by a new set of desires and inclinations that she began to experience right away.

She tuned the TV to a familiar female news anchor that would have normally found attractive and could not understand why she was not interested in her anymore. On her way to work that same morning, she caught herself watching a man jogging down the road, and she could not take her eyes off of him.

Lisa remembers panicking. She did not grasp the significance of what had happened to her. She broke down in overwhelming confusion. But, in a quiet place in her heart, God revealed to her that he had made her well, that all the crying and heart-wrenching sobbing that she had experienced was part of the healing from the abuse that she had suffered. God revealed to Lisa that he would prepare her to go into the world and tell her story of healing to all who would listen.

Lisa was distraught: How could she who did not know how to be a woman, dress like a woman, talk like a woman, or even walk like a woman become a part of God’s plan?

In an act of faith, Lisa put the restoration of her identity into the hands of God. As part of the healing journey she experienced a dramatic stripping away of “every resource in my life I ever attempted to hold onto”. Gone were the romantic relationships. Gone were her close friends. She became separated from the destructive influences of her past life. Lisa learned to rely totally on God for her support. She learned to discern the voice of God above all other voices.

“Although the last two years were undoubtedly the loneliest and hardest two years of my life, I grew completely dependent on God” she said.

Understanding the abuse, the pain, and the healing

During moments of prayer, God revealed to Lisa the reason why she took on a masculine identity and treated her female partners so well. It was not because of her own insecurities, or because she wanted what was truly good for these women. Everything that Lisa did for her partners was really done on behalf of the little girl inside herself who was sexually abused. God revealed to Lisa that through her actions, she was attempting to heal herself from the abuse she had suffered as a little girl. But it proved to be an unending cycle, because she saw that no one can ever be the source of healing. Lisa understood that her yearning for healing was why she could never do enough for her partners. She learned that she could not heal herself because only God alone is the One Who heals.

Lisa realized furthermore that she had never become distraught over each one of her numerous breakups because her partner could have been “any woman in the world” as long as she could become the object of her lavish treatment. Lisa discerned that there were certain characteristics in all of the women that she had drawn close to herself.

“They were submissive in almost all aspects of the relationship”, she said. “They desired to be held, taken care of, treated like a princess, protected, given complete attention in conversation and action, and talked to more delicately”.

Lisa now saw that she had insisted on her partners’ “unwavering femininity” because such femininity was “representational of the little girl that I was prior to the abuse.” She saw that she obsessed about protecting her partners, entertaining them, and “making their lives like one unending vacation” because she was “treating them like I believed I should have been treated as a little girl rather than the violent and damaging experiences I encountered”.

In a moment of truth she realized that she was “attempting to heal myself through them”.

Authentically feminine

After Lisa was healed that night at the hotel, or “delivered from homosexuality” as she likes to put it, she believes that God restored her identity as a woman and set authentic feminine inclinations and desires within her.

“Now I desire the things that my partners did. I want to be held, taken care of, protected, talked to sweetly, and treated gently,” she said. “My identity is now intact and safe in the hands of Jesus, and that is how He created me to feel.”

Lisa is in the midst of writing a book about her journey titled You Weren’t Meant to Carry That, to be released in 2013. Through prayer, Lisa discerned that she was “never comfortable” with the responsibilities that she had taken upon herself in her identity as a man, because she was not “meant to carry the burdens of a man”. She realized that she had not been “created for that”.

“Sometimes we carry so many burdens that are not our own…things we have no control of, questions and worries that do not rightfully belong to us. God wants you to do an inventory of your soul to see what you can find. If you are carrying burdens that belong to Him, He wants them back. He is ready to lighten your load”, she told LifeSiteNews.

Lisa sees her story of being healed from sexual abuse and delivered from homosexuality by the power of Jesus as something that is meant for every person struggling from abuse, with sexual identity, or caught up in the homosexual lifestyle. “They need to be healed. They need their identity restored by the power of Jesus Christ,” she said.

She has started up a Facebook page where she offers advice to homosexuals who want out and where she chronicles the struggles in her own journey. Throughout her struggle, she has taken the words of the Psalmist found in God’s Word and made them her own: “He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).

“I finally have peace and I owe it all to Jesus Christ,” she says. “Not many people would look at a drug addict and a lesbian and dare make the statement: ‘One day she will serve the Lord’. It sounds pretty ridiculous, but it happened.”