Steven Frederick

It's Time Steven Frederick

It is a painful thing when a person realizes that his carefully crafted life, with long held beliefs and a valued social structure, is no longer valid, and to live a life of more of the same is simply unacceptable. This is what Mark Gardner faces in It's Time. It is the story of a good little boy who faithfully followed the rules of his religion only to discover in midlife that he must forfeit all that has gone before and take a different path. Mark is a thirty-two year old Jehovah's witness elder who has lived a chaste, celibate life, pursuing God's work as he believed it to be. He has known he was gay ever since he was six years old, a fact that he has never acted upon and always compartmentalized into the deepest corner of his subconscious. When circumstances finally force Mark to face his homosexuality, he begins a painful and disorienting transformation, launching him on a tenuous search for happiness. He realizes on an intellectual level that to follow his path will mean giving up family and friends and his faith, the entire structure of his life, and he is prepared to do this. He knows it is time to start over. What he does not realize is that the beliefs and conditioning of a lifetime are not discarded in a day, a month or even a year. He holds a picture of the life he wants for himself, but he will never achieve it until he addresses his losses and his beliefs about religion, right and wrong and about himself. These are lessons he will have to learn, and It's Time chronicles the beginning of his journey.