Lament for the Trans Community- Day 115 (April 25th, 2021)

 I never would have known that my heart would one day lament for the trans community. The displacement I know so well is an incredibly divisive reality for so many. And most of these people would never choose this. Who would choose to not fit?

There are many people who believe that sin looks the same in everyone. But if you read what Paul says, we all have our preset boundaries. For some, the idea of eating forbidden-in-the-old-testament meat was still wrong. And it's made clear because they think it's wrong, if they eat it, it will be sinning. At the same time there were people who lived under the new covenant bought and offered by Christ's death and resurrection, thanked God for the food, and ate it without guilt or condemnation.

This tells me criteria is different for everyone. Is transgenderism sin? Maybe in some roundabout way like how mosquitoes and gnats, etc... are a product of the fall. Their existence is proof of brokenness and imperfection. As is mine. I will never call being transgender a full identity. I am a fractured person, still waiting to step into the fullness of God once my final breath is taken. 

Life for broken people is more about finding ways to cope and clear the debris so your years aren't constant murk and dirt from the pervasive internal storms. That's what being trans is for me: finally reaching a place of enough clarity where I'm content and can withstand --and even enjoy-- the day to day of life.

Jesus talks about building our house on solid ground instead of the sand. He will always be my immovable foundation but before this decision, my house was barely a structure anymore. And a frail house on an immovable foundation will still fall when the storms come. Nathan was a structure of rotten boards held together by the smallest of nails. The collapse was coming sooner rather than later.

What will make people most uncomfortable about my transition is that I still love Jesus and still claim Him as mine. My transitioning is on the basis of a different narrative than is popular: 'sometimes the healing we look for doesn't come. Then what?' I admit that most of my life consisted of desperate prayers to fit the body I was born in and to step into the name I was given.

My narrative is of spiritual exhaustion and the inability to stand under the weight of denying my truth any longer. My truth is that, for whatever reason, this is me. Maybe it's so I can understand the struggle, and, in turn, reach out a loving hand to those who need one desperately in this time. Or maybe the answer is a combination of several things I don't yet know. Either way, God saw it before He first conceived the idea of me and has a plan for it to bring good.

Not everyone is delivered of a struggle. Sometimes they are left in it, with nothing but the promise of His hand and His light to guide you. This is not everyone's narrative but it's my narrative, my story, my experience.