Finding Peace in the Gray: Reconciling My Faith in Christ While Preparing to Transition (MTF)

(Originally written on September 19th 2020. Days before my first therapy session) I am my father's son, right? That's the expectation. Except, I've never been a typical son. And, he was taken from me when I needed him most. He's been gone longer than I ever knew him. An imaginary eye that's always been watching me from afar. A standard I've held myself too. Some kind of thing where I make him proud and we one day look back on this life like I did good, did him proud. That's all well and good in theory. Continue chasing a shadow that isn't even there. Continue running a race that he never started. He left me to fend for myself, me and my weird, ill-fitting skin, and my awkward identity that I've tripped through most of my life. I'm supposed to find my place in this world. I thought I had it as a writer. That led to nothing and with it the only conceivable reason for why dad died to begin with. But that doesn't seem to be it. A lot of the times

 (Originally wrote on January 19th, 2019) “DO YOU WANT TO BE A WOMAN?” My wife said she was asking as my best friend, as someone who wants me to be who I am. Would i be happier living as V?  I denied it a few times, and honestly I still don’t know if I do. What I do know is that there are definitely times when I want nothing more than that. It’s not all the time. But it’s frequent enough to make me seriously think about it. “You don’t have to answer now. Just think about it.” She said it not as an ultimatum, so much as a tapering of expectations. If I were to answer yes and begin the process of transitioning, could she be okay essentially being with a woman? (Questions like that.) I’ve been thinking about it all day. Imagining how it would feel and how much everything would change. The very honest answer is I don’t know. If there were a third option and I could be a woman at a flip of a switch and then go back to the man by doing the same thing… well that would be the preference. Right

Once you make the decision to pursue transitioning, you have to reassess everything. The things that were stable in your life are now on shaky ground. And because of this, you try to go back. You let your mind go to a place where you can just stay a man--it'll be easier that way, after all. For little moments you grab onto that possibility... And then, that moment quickly fades and you're left thinking how nothing has changed. You can decide to try to just be the man again but that man will still be heavy in the quiet moments, burdened even in joyful times, and someone unsatisfied with most details of daily life. I could stay the man but I wouldn't be happy. To think otherwise is wishful thinking. I haven't been happy in the past. Why would I be happy now? If I stay him, everything stays the same, and that isn't what I want. More of the same would hurt me deeply. It would carve away more and more of my enjoyment until I enjoy nothing fully. Many people, if they had

I've already found that waiting to start HRT in a few months is actually a big step in itself. To some it may seem just like waiting, but you're not actually just waiting, you're preparing in countless little ways. Preparing yourself, preparing your wife, preparing your children. Every day you are shedding the preset image of who you've had to be. And this can be quite awkward. ... Awkward but rewarding. I've seen Vaela many times in the last few weeks. And she's a welcome sight to me always. I've seen her despite my short-but-growing hair, despite my still manly features, and despite my still prominent male wardrobe. And I imagine over the next few months, she'll be even clearer to me. The waiting gives me a chance to work through some of the growing pains now, letting her naturally emerge more and more daily, to where she'll soon be the normal and expected person for me, my wife, and my daughters to see.  I have yet to start those magic pills. And

I was going to go with an already established name, something people would easily recognize, easily grab onto. But I never really fit into what people can easily grab onto, which is one reason why my current male name has always been kind of bothersome: Nathan. Usually you find about three or four of them in one classroom, at least that's how it was when I was growing up. No differentiation, nothing really unique or special. The name I chose initially was Valorie. After discussing it with my wife and finding out she really didn't connect with that name, we went on a new name hunt. I found this, a perfect fitting name: Vaela (Vay-la). And what that name means in Old Norse is to lament or cry. And that's where she was born, in my grief, and in my pain. So isn't it fitting that my female name would reflect my journey so far? As I prepare to transition, I'm essentially building a person... not that she isn't already there but she has yet to be fully defined. It'

For those of us that live in the gray, we are left with few options when it comes to spiritual support. We either seek out a church that is all accepting but run the risk of unsound doctrine being preached... Or we try to gamble and find a church that is hopefully open enough to see past the exterior and focus on the heart.  What church has mostly become is a place for standards to be preached with no real solution how to uphold those standards. And though we know the grace of Christ and that His depth of love is endless, the depth of love in many churches is shallow and surface and alienating.  I saw a post on Facebook a couple days ago that really rubbed me the wrong way. Not verbatim but it looked close to something like this: Satan's Plan -normalize LGBTQ -normalize transgenderism -normalize abortion -normalize peadophilia Firstly, putting LGBTQ issues in the same category as abortion and pedophilia is truly wrong and cruel and counter productive. The church has sown seeds of i