The Pain of Our Adversity, Our Hope in Tomorrow

The following did not start out as a blog post, but as I finished writing, I felt my desire to share this portion of my testimony here in the hopes that perhaps it would be able to reach even a few people and be able to help give them even a portion of hope, strength and encouragement despite the pain of their trials.

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I know with all my heart that Jesus Christ is at the head of this church. I know that he knows each of us personally, not only through the blessings of the atonement, but because he is with us always through all that we do and knows firsthand. I know how much not only Jesus Christ loves us, but how much our Heavenly Parents love us as well, for I can feel their love in my life, and it's the warmth and encouragement of their love that makes it possible for me to survive each day with any level of hope and courage left. Knowing and feeling of their love in my life is one of my single greatest blessings. At any time in our lives, with any struggle, we can take our worries and our fears to Christ, and he in turn will teach his prophets the needs of his people.

I know the pains that each and every one of us feel on a daily basis because there is currently no doctrine concerning our trial on this earth, I feel it too, and the pain it brings cuts to the very center. However, I have to admit that I am truly grateful that the church hasn't been taught the doctrine concerning us yet. I, like most of us, have spent more time and energy than I can count desperately trying to help my family truly know me, and to help them see that what I'm doing is not a sin, but an eternal truth about my identity. Despite my effort, they still think I'm sinning, but I think they are starting to love me anyway. If the truth concerning transgender had come out even 6 months ago, my family would have loved me because the church said it was okay, and I don't think I would have been able to accept their love at that point. Despite the pain of waiting for the truth to be taught, I will always be grateful for the time I've had with my family to grow closer, because without it, I feel like our relationship would have been destroyed when the truth came out.

I know and feel the love that our Heavenly Parents have for us. I know and feel the love that our brother and savior Jesus Christ has for us. I also know that for them to love me so completely even after everything I've done wrong... I know because of their love that there will come a day when everyone on the face of this planet will know who we all truly are, and the events of that day will cause both great joy or confusion in the hearts of everyone who hears the truth when it is told. We must remain strong, now more than ever! If we give in to fear, hate, anger, discouragement, or we let our faith falter or even fail, then the adversary wins, and there is a chance that we can be lost forever. Hold strong. Together we can hold each other up in strength and faith as we try with all our power just to wait for that day when the entire world will know concerning us. Then at that day we can experience that great joy and peace together, and move forward to the other trails and struggles that day will bring, for we will be united with one heart, and we won't fall. We must be strong now, or that day may not be the day we expect it to be.

I'm sorry for the novel, and I know it is a breach of etiquette for responses, but there is so much that I felt needed said. I encourage anyone who questions my words to ponder and pray about them, and judge for yourself whether I speak truth or not. I truly do testify with all of my heart of the love that our Heavenly Parents have for each of us, and I know that we are never left alone.

He gave me my eyes, Part 2

I posted this a while back in response to a Facebook post from a friend who is also struggling with gender dysphoria, and while typing my response I feel like I was taught even a little bit more than I had previously known, and even helped to comfort me in my own situation with my family.

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"Since I tend to just say what comes to mind, here goes another thought.

Over the last 2-3 years since I've started to transition, I've noticed something. My family, far more than any of my friends, rejected my belief of who I am, and I think I now understand one of the greater catalysts for this. Everyone has an eternal identity, male and female, and being born into a body that also shares our spirits identity, it seems almost impossible for anyone to understand wanting to be different, it's repulsing to them. What they can never understand without experience is how we feel exactly the same way, but we are living in a body that is opposite of our eternal identity, which intensifies those feelings so much more. Because they can't understand, and because our eternal identities are, well, eternal, it's easy for the adversary to slip in a comment like, "Yes, all of your feelings of eternal identity are correct, you are who you are, and it doesn't change, so your son/daughter will never change either." In that comment he conveniently leaves out that their son/daughter, who will always be who they are, are indeed living in an imperfect body where who they are has been masked for whatever reason. What the adversary speaks is truth, but it is incomplete, and made to have us believe that nothing else can be added to it, and with how strong the feeling of eternal identity is, it is so easy to believe.

My family is just getting to where they are finally looking at me without being visually hurt over what I'm doing, and it has taken many, many painful visits over the years to get even this far, but still to them I will always be their son and brother, and the name or pronouns have not changed, nor do I see them changing anytime soon. I still hope that my family will come around, just as I hope that your family will also one day see what they are missing and be able to see and love the real you"

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In part 1 of this post, I shared an experience, an experience that left me shaken and very much afraid over the next few days, I even found myself unable to find the strength to pray.  My dad was working out of state at the time and I couldn't ask him for a blessing, though a blessing was the only thing I wanted, and potentially the only comfort that might would reach me in that condition.  The following Sunday in church, I was able to talk with one of my young men's leaders, and was able to ask for and receive a blessing from him.

Before he gave me a blessing, we sat in a quiet, unused room in the church building and he asked me why I wanted the blessing, and we talked about everything that had happened over the last few days.  This young men's leader already knew about my transition, he was one of the only people I trusted enough to share that part of my life with, and he had been a support to me in my transition.  After about 30 minutes of talking, he laid his hands on my head, and gave me a blessing.  The experience that followed is one that has forever changed me.  At that moment all feelings of gender dysphoria were removed from me completely, and for the first time in my life here on earth my mind was calm.  I hadn't realized just how loud gender dysphoria had been through my entire life until that point, and the silence in my head after it had been removed was deafening, and in the calm of this silence I finally felt truly male for the first time in my life, a feeling that before I had started transition had been one that I had searched for so very desperately and never found, and I was finally able to breath a sigh of relief.

Upon having the gender dysphoria removed I began to cry, what was I supposed to do now?  Was I just supposed to give up everything that made me happy in this life and try to be male after all?  My transition was the only thing that made me feel alive at all, the only thing that made me able to smile.  The feelings that ran through my heart and mind at that moment were perhaps some of the hardest in my life to work through, but I was able to discuss them with my young men's leader, and I left the church building that day with my head high, mind calm, and with a clarity of the world that I had never seen.  My senses were sharp, my focus direct, and I could see that I could finally focus on a topic or project without being distracted by something else, I would be able to give my full attention to one idea at a time, I was even able to admire the beauty of the mountains and the crisp clean air that day, and the simplicity of life without the gender dysphoria left me centered and calm.

At the same time of this sigh of relief I began to finally focus my life around being male, a part of me died, and I began to cry, and after getting home I cried more than I had ever cried in my entire life.  My mom was present during this crying, in her own words, said that up until that point in her life she had never truly seen anyone weep.  The calm I had previously felt dissipated in those sobbing tears, never to return.  The pain behind those tears is a pain that I will never forget, a pain that took me a year to even start understanding, but is something that now, a little over 2 years later, I think I understand.  I still don't know why my Father in Heaven chose to teach me this way, but when all of my feelings of gender dysphoria were removed, I was shown what it was like to be male, truly male, and after over a year of deep, earnest soul searching, I think I understand why I was given this experience.  I had to find out for myself who I was, who I am.  Knowing yourself isn't something you can be shown, it is something that is truly discovered and felt deep within your own soul, and is deeply sacred and deeply personal.  In those couple of hours, I guess you could say that previous prayers to make me male had been answered, but as I've pondered, that experience was the single most foreign experience I have ever felt, and in time I have come to truly believe that I have never felt that way before in all of my eternal existence.  I had been right before when the reality of motherhood hit me so very strongly one afternoon before I had started my transition.  In that moment, all my desperate fighting to find the desire to be a father evaporated instantly and my soul was filled with an all encompassing desire to be a mother.  In that moment I could see a part of me that had been dormant, and it filled my soul with the greatest joy, comfort, and peace, and it gave my life purpose for the first time I could remember, including the aforementioned experience where I was shown how it was to be male.  This was the very event that broke down my defenses, broke down every effort I had previously made in order to "stay male," and finally allowed my heart to let go of this life and all of the heartache it had brought me, and to finally start being myself for the first time in this mortal life.

There are so many pains and heartaches in this life, so many circumstances that once we entered this life we knew that we might have no control over.  Whatever our circumstances in this life, whatever pains we accepted to undergo before this life, we all must have had good reason to accept them.  For me, there is a part of me that wants to go to the me before this life began and scream at her, telling her that she is insane and and that she should go talk to Father and take the other path that was offered.  However, when I calm down, especially in those briefest of moments when I catch a glimpse of the person I am becoming because of these excruciating trials, I know that me before this life was wise, and made the right choice.  Because I was born in a body contrary to my eternal identity, I have literally had to spend every waking minute of every day for several years desperately searching for what matters most to me in life.  I'll be forever grateful for a trial that truly pushed and pushes me to search for and find these answers.  For now this is what I know, what I truly know deep within myself, that there is nothing I want more than to be a wife and a mother.

I know that I am a daughter of God, the spirit has confirmed this to me continually from the moment I had the faith to stand up for myself in my own heart.  I know that the pains of this life can help me to become a more caring and loving person if I let them.  I know that one day I will be able to enter the House of the Lord and claim all the blessings of eternity that are promised to the faithful, and that one day I will be a wife and a mother.