Imagine for a moment that you are a teenager. Or a child. Or any age, mind you, but I'm going to use the example of your teenage self. You wake up one morning after a restful night's sleep, walk to the bathroom, and to your horror, you discover that sometime in the middle of the night, some unexplainable phenomena has taken place, and you are now the opposite sex of who you were before. If you were a guy, a female body now stares back at your from the mirror, complete with developed breasts, and a feminine version of your face. If you were a girl, all your feminine features are now gone, and you have hair on your chest and chin. Your genitalia has swapped as well, of course.
You let out a silent scream, then find your true voice and let our a real one. You discover your voice has changed as well from what it was yesterday, to a masculine (or feminine) one as the case may be. You clamp your hand over your mouth in disbelief. What in the HECK is going on?!
Your mother enters the room, and walks over to you. She says "Oh, sweeteheart, what's wrong? Did you have a bad dream?" You stare at her, dumbfounded. Clearly, she sees you standing on front of her in a different body than you had the night before. Yet, she takes no notice of this, and continues to speak to you as if you have always been this sex. You are her son, but she walks to the closet and says "Did you wash your pink dress? You'll need it for the party this weekend. That boy you've had a crush on is supposed to come. Aren't you excited?" You panic and run to the closet. Your heart sinks as you see that all your clothing has changed as well. You no longer have any guy clothes. Nothing but dresses and skirts. You do have two pair of jeans, but both of them have pink sequins.
If you were a girl the night before, all your girl clothes are gone, and you have nothing but dress shirts and jeans. Your mother asks if you and Karen are going out this weekend, and if you've kissed her yet. Your dad comes in and says "Hey now, we've talked about this. What he and Karen do is their business, just no premarital sex. Right Sport?
Karen? Who is Karen? You're a girl! And a straight girl, at that! At least you were a girl yesterday, but now everyone seems to believe that you have always been a guy!
Now imagine each scenario as it would apply to you. Imagine being told that the sex you are (whether you are mentally ok with it or not) is the sex you will be. To add insult to injury, you are told that any sexual feelings that go against the norm for the body you have is SINFUL. So the man you were yesterday (who is now a woman; but with a man's brain) should be ashamed of any romantic feelings you have toward women. The woman you were 24 hours ago is gone, and so any plans you had for being a cheerleader are out the window, and your dad is expecting you to join the football team.
If you look at those situations from that standpoint, and are asked "How would you feel if that happened to you?" You'd either look at being Transgender in a completely different light, or you'd say the dreaded "Yeah, but...", which is basically a cop-out for "I don't care. I'm a narrow-minded person who is not going to show any empathy toward my child (or anyone else's) if they question the gender that GOD GAVE THEM. And if I do, I'm still going to tell them it's a sin to be gay."
And you know what? That's your right. You have a right to your own opinion and parenting style.
On the other hand, for the children and teens (and adults also) of the LGBTQ community, I am eternally grateful that there are people (like me and others like me) out there who are both Christians and loving and accepting of the broad spectrum of human beings in our world. If it weren't for people like that, there would be a lot of children no longer walking this earth. Kids who take their own lives because their parents and loved ones refuse to accept or understand them for who they are.
I can hear some of you now: "Whoa, Daniel. This is supposed to be a blog about your depression and anxiety and PTSD. Where did the LGBTQ soapbox stuff come from in this post?"
Please, allow me to explain.
I've dealt with my mental illness since I was 8 years old. For the majority of my life, I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't put a label on it. When I was a teenager, I told my youth pastor about how I felt, and told him I was concerned about depression. He said "God can fix that. Just focus on Him. Bask in the warmth of God's glory and love, and He will erase all those feelings. If you find yourself feeling depressed after having fully surrendered it all to God, pray HARDER. Maybe something you've done--some unconfessed sin--is blocking the power of God in your life."
So naturally, I believed that when my depression did not go away, that I was blocking God's healing. I was obviously sinning in some way, because if I truly wanted to be fixed, God would fix it. (Psalm 37:4, anyone?)
Am I comparing being trans (or any area of LGBTQ) to having a mental illness like depression?
Yes, yes I am. What I am not saying is that being LGBTQ is a mental illness.
Quite the opposite.
If you believe that God makes no mistakes (but people do) then you cannot claim a person who is transgender is committing a sin, or is mentally messed up. Since this is something that has been a part of their mental and genetic makeup since they were born, you must consider the possibility that God wanted and needed them to be just as they are. If you are unwilling to accept this, you are telling the little girl with the boy brain that she is sick and needs to pray more. Or the little boy with the girl brain that he is having homosexual feelings, and those are perverted.
I've lived with anxiety disorder most of my life. While I didn't know why I felt the way I did, my heart was screaming for someone to understand. I was oversensitive (often) and was labeled as being a wussy-boy, or queer. I wanted to play with dolls just as much as action figures, and was told dolls were for girls, so that must mean I'm a girl. I cried when I saw someone else was crying, and so I was labeled as being a crybaby. When I would get frightened of being around older boys, I was accused of being a sissy, and asked if I was gay.
What I just needed was for someone to understand that my complexity was just as frustrating to me as it was to them, and that more than anything I wanted to be accepted for who I was.
I'll have more on this later. A lot more.
Take this blog post and do with it what you will, even if it changes your way of looking at me, forever.
(God, I hope it does.)
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