#GODLOVESTRANS↓

You might never hear this from a pulpit, or from your parents, or anyone. I was lucky with friends who pointed the way. I made this site for you, because you should not need to be lucky to know this.

In truth, I'm hesitant to write anything at all here. But I felt, for at least this innaugural 'issue', some explianation was in order.

I'm hesitant to write because I know approximately nothing about God, Religion, Spirituality, Councelling, or anything that matters. I do know how to write code, and make websites. So there's that. Also I'm transgender, and so there's that too.

Like most every transgender person I know, I've been through some shit. If you're trans, I suspect you have been too! I was a rather staunch athiest prior to my life blowing completely apart, as one's life does when one is inescapably careening toward gender transition whilst living amogst the growing ruins of a life not compatible with said transition.

I found that transition is an inherently spiritual experience. It is impossible to avoid deep questions about who one is, and about how one fancies that one might fit into the grand scheme of life on this Earth. The experience of transition drove me back to the faith tradition I had been raised in, but now I found myself approaching as the ultimate outsider: coming from a place of skeptical unbelief, and at the same time rejected as an outcast by the loudest, most fundamental voices of that tradition.

How on Earth did I ever come to the point where I felt moved to build something like this?

The short answer, is that randomly, I happened to have the right friends, and those friends were members of an affirming church the next town over. Without hyperbole, what I found at that church saved my life.

In hindsight, I can see it for what it was, the hand of God, incarnate in other people.

Since I came out of the closet, and unabashedly joined the transgender commuinity, I have met transgender engineers, and veternarians, tons of IT people like myself ... I've met doctors and laywers and military folks ... but the profession I've ran into more than any other: pastors.

So many pastors, and ex-pastors. Every one of them, on one level or another, struggling with the same crap I was. I found that incredibly moving, because I'll tell ya what, when I first typed 'transgender' into Google, what I didn't find were a bunch of pastors telling me "hey, Jesus loves you for this, relax its gonna be ok".

Far from it. If you're reading this you already know what I found. Exploitation porn, and heaps of religious condemnation written by people who, though often kind at heart, were simply coming from a place of ignorance. Others were less kind. Either way it amounted to the same thing from my perspective. I could be forgiven for coming away with the impression that I was broken, and that there was no rest to be found for me here. If I hadn't been lucky, I'd probably have ended it all in 2018. If I had, I'd have merely been a statistic. So many of us die that way, it's practically a trope.

I'm convinced that the reason so many of my transgender siblings were called to ministry (even before they had a grip on the fact that they were transgender), is precicely because this community needs them so badly. We are a marginalized community, largely living in existential pain and often suffering under the bullshit notion that God isn't ok with us. That God didn't make us this way intentionally.

This site exists to be a place that loudly states that transgender people are beloved of God. If you are interested in writing for the site, please see our github repo

psst ... hey terrified trans person googling your condition, hoping it doesn't mean you're going to hell ...

see my picture up there? That's me holding my grandson literally two nights ago. Two years ago, my family and my relationship to my kids were a smoking crater. I couldn't even begin to imagine the possibilities and healing in store.

I am not saying the outcome is determinate.

I'm not saying "hey we got answers over here and you too will be reunited with your formerly estranged kids and the world will be unicorns and rainbows with Jesus"

Here's what I'm saying, and I'm hoping to give voice to others who will say it far better:

there are others like you out here, you are loved, you are valid, and you are a precious child of God.

As. Is.

don't ever let anyone tell you different.

Knowing just that and not a lot more, has made every difference for me.

God made you this way on purpose. It's gonna be ok.

now I shall return to writing code, and let the pastors speak for themselves

Most believers use baptism as their example of the re-birthing process.

At best, the act of baptism is an outward sign of an inward reality. To paraphrase Paul (Romans 6, etc), when we go down into the water of baptism our old selves die, our sinful nature is washed clean, and we become heirs to the kingdom of God. When we rise up, we are spiritually new creations. Transformed from our old selves, to our new spiritual selves, now walking on a path to eternal salvation.

It's important to remember that the Old Testament (Jeremiah 1:1) tells us that God knew who we were before we were in our mother's wombs. That we have been fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), and that each human creation is made in the likeness the image of God the Creator. According to the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 56:4-5), Eunuchs hold a special place within God's creation (it is immaterial that they were not allowed in the temple, neither were woman in that time period). :

⁴ For this is what the Lord says:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, ⁵ to them I will give within my temple and its walls, a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will endure forever. a place set apart for holy purposes.”

Then, in the New Testiment, Jesus himself says:

"there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."

What if I were to say that the word in Scripture that, in English, we translate as 'eunuch' was in fact, understood in the time period, as the modern English words transgender or intersex?

Friends think about it, transgender people are literally set apart and honored by God to serve in holy places. But if you want a more tangible way of looking at this, one that truly exemplifies Christian faith, how about this:

When one is in lockstep, in a solid relationship with Christ Jesus and the Creator God the Father, prayerful, etc. One comes to the conclusion that the reason for years of misery, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, bullying, and overall depression is because your faith community tells you that being LGBTQI+ is sinful. When you routinely, for years ask God to cure you of your sins, to make you whole (Sozo), and the one thing that God has not healed is your LGBTQI+ nature ... is it, perhaps ... because those items are not broken and therefore do not require healing?

Let's go back to the model for rebirth.

You repent, you seek forgiveness, and then you approach the throne to walk in Salvation.

Rebirth is necessary, a transgender person in Christ, begins hormonal therapy, much like a cocoon and a butterfly ... the Transformation begins.

After a passage of time (different for everyone) on HRT, a person then may decide to have top or bottom surgeries to remove the dysphoria that might be caused by body parts, all the while being in the state of prayer of repentance and of walking in Salvation.

So over time this person has truly become a New Creation in Christ Jesus.

What if being trans is a calling from the Creator to live out a spiritual and physical transformation of the body and the person that God meant you to be before you were in your mama's womb.

To me, I can think of no better illustration of that total change and rebirth than that of a transgender believer.

Perhaps if we all chose to see it this way, we could all agree that God's creation is simply more diverse then we thought. After all, we so commonly try and humanize God. God is bigger than all that, so too, obviously is Creation.

May the blessings of the Lord, be with you always. World without end...

I have spent my entire life surrounded by various forms of religion, mostly from a Christian point of view.

A little background related to that. I grew up in a south Louisiana Cajun family, both sides coming as part of the Acadian Dispersion from eastern Canada, which also meant growing up deeply rooted in Catholicism.

I went through all of the hoops early on and after my parents were divorced in the late 70’s we became pretty nominal, but those roots ran deep.

Between the ages of 12 and 18 I was in and out of a couple of Baptist churches, one Independent Fundamentalist, the other Southern Baptist. My best friend from high school got me going to church with him for a while at his Southern Baptist church and that was probably ages 15-18, and that was the most consistency for me.

At the age of 18 I found my way into south Mississippi and in another Southern Baptist church where I made what is considered my own “personal profession of faith.” In other words, I claimed my on faith in what I believed to be true about Jesus; his death and his resurrection. About a year later I found myself considering ministry work. As a result I started serious training for this after graduating from college and entering the most conservative of Southern Baptist seminaries before beginning my own full time ministry in 2004 as a pastor.

I say all of this, because the one thing that has been a constant in all of this has been guilt and shame.

I used to joke with my own children how I could “throw guilt like a shoe” because I had experienced so much of it growing up, preached so much of it as adult, and continued to carry that baggage well into my 40’s.

My guilt was because my heart, mind and soul didn’t match up with my body. I was assigned male at birth but I knew that wasn’t right. It wasn’t until I started seminary in 1995 that I learned the word for it: transgender. I am a transgender woman. And the weight of guilt and shame that I carried until just a few years ago is what kept me locked away thinking I was broken and in need of being fixed.

Yes I would experiment here and there. Wearing the undergarments under my clothes. Buying clearance shoes as if I was shopping for my wife. Shaving my legs from time to time. But all of that was short lived. I would soon find myself purging it all out of guilt and shame. And then the religion would kick in and I was asking God to forgive me of something I was too ashamed to even admit to him and praying to be “fixed.”

Guilt and shame are powerful tools.

They can break hearts and steal lives.

Their weight is immeasurable, yet crushing to those who are victims. For over 40 years I let guilt and shame control my life. For over 40 years the thumb of those 2 sons of a bitches controlled so much of my life!

That was until grace became real to me.

Grace in theological circles is defined as “unmerited favor.” In other words, you are getting what you never deserved. A broader definition from Merriam-Webster is simply “approval, favor.”

Grace wasn’t something I needed to seek out from God, it was something I already had since They created me. Psalm 139:13-14 reads in the NLT:

“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.”

In other words it took me over 40 years to realize I wasn’t broken, I wasn’t messed up, and I wasn’t a mistake! Those things that guilt and shame said I should feel sorry for and “repent of” from years of religious teachings were not so. Grace said I am accepted. Grace said God knows me inside and out! Grace said I am free to live for the first time in my life!

When I finally gave guilt and shame the finger and told them to F off my life changed. I found me. I found Danielle Grace in there. She has been there all along, but I wasn’t sure how to let her be true to herself. Grace won in a way I never imagined it happening.

And in grace I can agree with the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:1 (NLT)

“So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.”

There is no condemnation for me, and there is no condemnation for you.

Accept who you are because God already accepts you, and be free to let grace reign as you become who you were created to be!