The start of this journey

The first thing that needs to be understood is this. There's a world of misconceptions around transgender people. What I want to focus on most and what I find to be most important is the belief that we are just people actively looking to live in sin. More accurately, we are just people that don't fit in the skin that we're in and are desperately looking to find a place of peace and contentment. We have walked through many stages in life trying to fit as the gender we were assigned at birth. Through toil and daily struggle and countless moments of trying to will ourselves to fit our outward gender, it never fits. It's like trying to walk in shoes that are too big your whole life: more often than not, you find yourself tripping in things that come easy to so many others.

One of the biggest things I've been faced with in my lifelong walk with Christ has been how to give Him all of me when I'm so tied up on the inside. How do I give Him my time and my attention when I'm using it to dedicate to the more authentic and better fitting me? Many Christians would have you believe that this scenario shouldn't exist, that transgender people who love Jesus with all their hearts are not something that should be, that it's an abomination or that it goes against what's natural. This whole world goes against what's natural. Since the fall of man, all that God intended for how things were supposed to operate got all twisted up. And even though Jesus came and died on the cross and paid for our salvation... and even though he said His work is finished, it means He doesn't need to do anything more to complete it. But we are still walking out a very incomplete and unfinished life. He's the writer and we're the characters. We're currently living what He's already written, so when He says 'it's finished' He is essentially a writer that wrote THE END: "I have completed my role in this but as the characters you still have to live out the events of the story." And in the story we are broken and in the story we are split and in the story women can be born in men's bodies and men can be born in women's bodies and in that story those people can still love Jesus with all their hearts. This is a message that isn't said enough: Our worth hasn't been forfeited! His love runs too deep for Him to let us go. He is relentless in His pursuit and He has seen every misfit tear that has been shed and every moment where we didn't fit and every wish that we sent up to live as our authentic self. He's seen it all. He understands it. 

And still... trying to reconcile my faith with my gender identity has been one of the toughest challenges in my life and it remains so now. Every time that I think about getting closer to Jesus I always wonder if I'm living outside of His will. If I was named by Him as a child, why has my name never fit me? Why has my male identity always been loose and awkward fitting? I'm saved as a man. But why couldn't I ask him in my heart as Vaela? Ask him to take a life that a lot of people didn't see happening for me but use it for his glory? Why can't I reach out and offer the message of hope to people in my community? Couldn't that be why I'm a transgender woman? I can understand the walk and the struggle and the tug and pull that never goes away. I can use my voice to offer the free gift of Salvation to people who feel like they have now stepped outside of it. In this blog I'm not going to quote a lot from the Bible about justifications, because there's a lot from the Bible that people like to twist to say that this is undeniably okay. And you know I don't really know if this lifestyle is okay in God's eyes but I know that His love is deep enough and I want to speak to the heart of God in my posts, the heart of a Savior who understands that things are screwed up and Who can still love screwed up things. After all, He died just as much for the people who nailed Him to the cross as He did friends and family and those who were already in line with Him. He died for everyone. He died for the the gay man just as he died for the pastor. He died for the transgender person just as He died for the gender assured... What is on offer today is a message of grace to people that don't fit in the box of what's acceptable in many eyes.

There is a lot of black and white that is put on people, that either you're good or you're bad, either you're holy or unholy. What I've learned is there's a lot of gray in life because I'm currently living in the gray. Does Jesus still love me in the gray? Does He still cherish me as a child even though I don't fit in the role that people expect for me? I imagine that as I go through this transition, I will become a better, happier person. I will become a more free person and in turn will actually be able to turn my heart back to Him again. I know, it doesn't look natural and it doesn't look the way people expect. To so many people life is black and white but there are those of us who have to make peace with the gray.

I have yet to reach that place. But I'm hopeful that this is the start of a journey that can help me reconcile my love with Christ despite the reality that I am a female in a male's body. It doesn't disqualify me. If anything, it makes me a voice for Him in a place few are willing to step into. 

Join me on this journey. It will cover the emotional, the spiritual, the raw and real moments, the heartbreaks, the triumphs... nothing is off limits.

ps: 141 days until I plan on starting HRT. Time to live my truth starting on my 30th birthday.