Sharing this part of myself isn't easy. In the past year, I have felt the pull on my heart to open up to the world about who I am; who I have always been as far as I can remember. My gender identity is a part of me that I'm now ready to share, even though it feels both exhilarating and unnerving.
During different periods of my life, I have made the active choice to hide who I am, often at great personal cost, whether out of comfort, safety, convenience, role requirements, or even denial. But an interesting thing happens as we grow older; the facades we create for ourselves tend to dissolve in the face of our own mortality. Over time, I slowly realized how dreadfully stuck I was in my own head, with anxiety and depression only the tip of the iceberg of my emotional and mental health struggles. I began to see how my juggling of choices forced me into a cognitive corner; constantly choosing between authenticity and conformity led to a sense of being trapped.
And the last straw was how it affected my faith in God.
You see, Christianity has a tenuous relationship with gender, focused on a strict male/female binary. This tension was something I wrestled with deeply. In the beginning, it is said that God made mankind; male and female, he created them. So throughout history, those who didn't fit those molds were given a bad rap and forced into seclusion or worse. But we must remember that though God works in simplicity… I do not believe he limits the creativity of his expression, including in the realm of gender identity.
The same God who created the heavens and the earth, giving them day and night, oceans and dry land, also caused that there be transitions betwixt the binary aspects of his wonder. Between day and night, we find dawn and dusk, and a thousand varying degrees of beautiful shades of color and light. Marshes, fenlands, bogs, and wetlands give delicate and tenuous life a place to settle down and thrive, whereas in the dry deserts or deep oceans, they would suffer and perish. Just as these liminal spaces, these in-between places, exist in nature, so too does my gender identity exist as a valid and beautiful expression of God's creation.
I exist in that in-between space.
I believe that my gender identity, like those who identify strictly as male or female, occupies a sacred and equally valid space. Indeed, I believe that because of my gender identity, I have the blessed opportunity to love and understand all of God's creations, regardless of circumstance, creed, gender, race, social standing, or any of the other constructs that tend to separate and not unify mankind.
So please, be patient with me as I share my experiences with you through this dedicated account. I understand the discomfort that this topic brings. I realize that some of you may equate those feelings of discomfort to unyielding confirmation that who I am is in opposition to my Heavenly parentage. I challenge each of you who finds themselves coming to this conclusion to walk with me with an open heart and listen to my story, and gently open up to the risk that when we limit ourselves to comfortable topics, familiar echo chambers, and like-minded relationships, we limit our ability to love our neighbors as Christ would want us to.
P.S. I know that sharing this part of myself might bring up questions for some of you. To help address those, I've created a Frequently Asked Questions page where I delve into some of the complexities of being transgender and a member of the Church. I discuss how I reconcile my gender identity with my faith, the challenges I face, and what it means to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ community. If you're curious to learn more, I invite you to explore the FAQ page. It's a space for open dialogue and deeper understanding.
