One Step At A Time

Mary Oliver’s poem, The Journey, begins with these lines:

            One day you knew what you had to do and began

            Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice.

We are all subject to those cacophonous voices. Early in life we focus on mom’s voice, with every other sound fading into the background. In our formative years we listen to other authorities. I’ve always been amazed when NCAA basketball players clearly hear their coach from across the floor, when I can’t hear the person next to me in the same noisy coliseum.

Eventually we begin the process of differentiation. We become our own person, formed by our past experiences but now making our own way in the world. Some people complete this process by the end of their 30s. Others still have not completed the process well into their 60s.

When you are raised in a conservative religion, differentiation is difficult. You are expected to follow the rules – not just until you are 21 – but forever. The more restrictive the rules, the more difficult it is to differentiate. It is fascinating to see that attendance at the most restrictive churches is often far higher than it is at more liberal churches. Is it because the conservative churches hold the truth, as they claim, or because their congregants are frightened to invite mystery and complexity into their lives, and are therefore more likely to remain within the fold? Jungian analyst James Hollis certainly believes the later when he says, “Religion is for those afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have already been there.”

In so many ways the clear boundaries of family and faith were nurturing for me, except when they were not. The church was of virtually no help with being transgender, the biggest struggle of my life. It did not help me when I was 20, nor when I was 30, nor when I was 50. The lack of assistance left me bereft. I tried talking with leaders in the church about my struggle when I was 20, 22, 25, 33, and so on. I was greeted with the typical responses you already suspect. “If you pray diligently God will remove this thorn in the flesh.” “Struggling with something like this builds character.” (That is actually true, though not in the way church people might expect.) “This is clearly wrong (Old Testament scripture offered) and you must fight against it.” The predictable list goes on.

What these superficial instructions do is drive an inquisitive young person toward the questions that have no answers – the ones that when asked cause your minister to reply, “Oh Paul, how could you ask that?” As if the person’s obvious displeasure should be enough to send you on your way, repentant. “Have I ever led you astray? You must trust me on this.” Well, come to think of it, I have no idea if you are leading me astray if you refuse to respond to the question I am asking.

Aware of my struggle, but before he knew of my transition, a person I deeply respect commented on my blog and quoted Wendell Berry. Jayber Crow, the protagonist in the novel of the same name, is struggling with difficult questions and seeks out a wise old professor who says,

“You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out – perhaps a little at a time.'”

“And how long is that going to take?”

“I don’t know. As long as you live, perhaps.”

“That could be a long time.”

“I will tell you a further mystery,” he said. “It may take longer.”

Not until I was 30, when I asked a retired gentleman to become my mentor, did I have a wise older person like Jayber’s professor in my life. He knew my issue and never judged me for it. Instead, he gave me permission to see my struggle as the massively difficult issue it was. He said, “Your heart is steadfastly turned toward the truth. But in situations like this, in which the truth is so difficult to discern, you must join Pascal and trust your heart.”

A couple years ago I mentioned to my psychiatrist that I had written a 10,000-word journal about my struggle. To my surprise he asked to read it. After he finished the long document, he wrote, “Poignant, and painfully free of self-deception.” It seems wise people know the truth is hard to tell and the truth is hard to tell. It is difficult to discern and even more difficult to disclose.

For decades I attempted to integrate Paula into Paul. I was left profoundly depressed and deeply unhappy. Eventually my family doctor said, “Among the very difficult choices you must make, it seems transitioning may be the only one that is sustainable.” I did not want the doctor to be right. Finally, when I had no other choice, I trusted my heart and transitioned.

There were many things I did not fully understand when I began this journey, as is true with any monumental journey. Just ask Odysseus. When you transition everyone in your world is forced to transition with you, and none of them are excited travelers. But those who love you work through their struggles and remain in your life. The few who have done so are discovering what I am discovering. It is far easier for me to integrate Paul into Paula than it was for me to integrate Paula into Paul. That is a truth I can easily discern.

I have lost much and continue to lose much. I will not lie, the losses have been staggering. Have they been worth it? As my cousin Jane said, “Your smile says it all.” Continuing the journey has definitely been worth it, authentically trying to become the person God envisions, and allows me to form.

I know many of you will disagree, particularly that God might have envisioned Paula. But the time has come to stop writing and telling me, “Your soul is in danger.” I have considered your words for decades, and I am going in a different direction, one that is firmly formed by the kind of wrestling with God that comes through long suffering.

I do not know what the future holds. Of course, no one is privy to the future, one of the wonderful complexities of human existence. But I do know how I shall travel this road – one step at a time – and forward.

The Journey ends with these words:

             As the stars burned through the sheets of clouds there was a new voice

            Which you slowly recognized as your own

            That kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world

            Determined to do the only thing you could do

            Determined to save the only life you could save.   

And so it goes.

Dissed and Dismissed

I flew to Philadelphia then took the Acela Express to New York City.  I usually write when I am traveling.  On this trip I watched. At my airport gate there was a slight young brunette with 5-inch heels and skinny jeans.  Her “significant other” (I use the term loosely) was leafing through a copy of Maxim.  Apparently fresh from the gym, he wore a tank top and sweat pants.  In the 10 minutes I watched, not once did Mr. Biceps even glance in the girl’s direction, though she talked to him the entire time.  I later watched them board the flight.  Guess who got on first, and did not help lift her bag into the overhead bin? I see this a lot.  You do too.  Her face was so fresh and young and vulnerable.

I took a cab from the airport to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.  When I boarded the train I took a seat directly across from an attorney traveling from Washington to New York, briefs scattered all over his fold-down tray.  He had a square jaw, wavy salt and pepper hair and a gray Brooks Brothers suit.  He definitely belonged on the train from DC to New York.  Seated next to him was a statuesque blond in Ralph Loren.  At first I assumed she was sitting with her boss.  Then she leaned her head on his shoulder, not in a daughter-father kind of way.  He did not stop tap, tap, tapping on his laptop.  He hunched up his shoulder until she had no choice but to lift her head and settle back into her seat.  He never spoke to her during the entire 60-minute trip. Same story, different socioeconomic group.

I am a theistic evolutionist. I sometimes imagine a God who gave birth to all of this matter and energy, then pretty much left it alone to raise itself.  I know how God felt.  You get tired constantly stepping in to resolve your children’s bickering.  Eventually you just say, “As long as no limbs are severed, I’ll let them work this out on their own.”

So God stood back and watched God’s “child” unfold.  Then God said to himself and herself (that being Jesus and the Spirit), “Uh oh, I was kinda hoping the male humans would evolve beyond the elk, but it doesn’t look promising.  We’re gonna have a lot of explainin’ to do.”

About a decade ago an article in Psychology Review said men and women respond differently to stress.  Men resort to the “fight or flight” syndrome, while women prefer to “tend and befriend.”  In times of stress they tend to relationships and befriend others (primarily women) who can provide emotional support.

On my trip I saw neither “fight or flight” or “tend and befriend.” From the men I saw “bore and ignore” and from the women I saw a willingness to be “dissed and dismissed.”  After all, what would cause a woman to be willing to sit in figurative coach while her “man” (again, using the term lightly) sits comfortably in cultural first class, assuming she will answer his every beck and call?  It is 2014.  There is something wrong with this picture.

I felt badly for these two women.  Did someone not tell them who they were? I am learning a lot. A lot.

Your Talent and the World’s Need

Aristotle said you find your purpose at the intersection of your talents and the world’s need. Frederick Buechner wrote that your calling is where the world’s deep hunger meets your deep gladness. Finding one’s calling is the last great task of early adulthood. Sometimes it remains elusive for decades.

My calling has always been clear. I am a communicator. I was once asked if I had a life phrase. Without contemplation I answered, “To alleviate spiritual suffering.” (As a former editor, I value brevity.) In fair measure my answer was accurate. For so many of the people with whom I interact, the church has been a place of great suffering. I wanted to alleviate the suffering. I still do.

Many churches are filled with loving saints and angry fundamentalists. One group gives life. The other saps the soul. I wanted to do something about it. I spent a lot of years trying to tell people who thought they were not okay that they were, in fact, okay.

We are all formed by our experiences. My experience of the church has been like my experience of life – paradoxical. From the same place comes goodness and evil, darkness and light. When I was young I had big plans. I wanted to end all darkness. Nowadays I am content to shine my flashlight in whatever dark cave I happen to encounter.  I am okay with my limitations.

In the recent HBO series, True Detective, the two principle characters became obsessed with the extremely dark side of life. I was surprised when in the final minutes of the season finale one of them looked at the night sky and said, “I believe the stars are winning.” I don’t know who the show runners were for True Detective, but I like the way they think. Evil might have its day, but the light wins.

Of late, I too have seen a lot of the dark side of life.  I’m reminded of Scott Peck’s statement that 99 percent of the world’s evil is done by people convinced they are absolutely right.  I’ve got lots of doubts about lots of things, but of this much I am certain.  There is too much suffering, and somebody needs to help alleviate it.

 

Call and Calling

Recently I spoke with a woman about the joys of serving for a very long time in just one place.  For over three decades I was blessed to do varied and interesting work. I did not take good work for granted. 
I believe God calls us toward a profession, a calling, in which we can burst forth with color.  God helps us see the offering we might make, one that gladdens our hearts and meets a hungry world in need.  Then we are given the confidence to do the work and the strength to leave behind the voices with all their bad advice.

The hardest voices to banish are the ones coming from your own head.  Often they spring up like weeds from the neural valleys of a wounded childhood.  Unfortunately, we are often left to do our own weeding.  But with people who love us deeply those internal voices can be stilled, replaced with a beautiful new voice you are surprised to recognize as your own – full of confidence and laughter, fierce determination and abiding comfort.

One’s calling, or vocation, should not be confused with the call of God to a specific task.  That call usually arises from within your broader calling, but is a summons to a place as yet unknown, untried, and usually terrifying.  It is a call to cross a vast sea to a new land with fallen branches and stones. 
If you accept this call you may or may not find happiness.  You may not even find peace.  Maybe you will find joy, the kind that comes from accepting what is.  And you are likely to find power, wisdom, and strength.

My daughters bought me a bouquet of summer flowers.  They were beautiful.  The strangest thing happened.  They refused to die.  For weeks they stayed and stayed, offering their welcome with each new morning, blessing me with their faithfulness.  I took the last one and pressed it between the pages of a book of poetry, right next to a butterfly I once knew who taught me ever so much. If we are fortunate our calling will be experienced like that bouquet, resilient and full of life.

Over the years I have received a number of specific calls to particular tasks.  I answered some.  I refused a few.  To answer God’s call brought life and strength and hope.  To refuse it brought the dull absence of authenticity. 
The specific call of God continues.  As always it is frightening, exciting, terrifying.  The next one is usually the hardest yet.  But leaving the voices behind, you answer the call.

It Is What It Is

The reasons were many for not telling the world much earlier that I am transgender, not the least of which was a genuine desire to remain a male and spare my family and friends great pain. At this point, however, all of that is so much water under the bridge. The truth is that shocking information was suddenly dropped from a great height. Lots of expectations, valuations and assumptions had a great fall. It is safe to say all the king’s horses and men do not stand a chance.

A lot of people, particularly church people, are struggling. Some have said I was their rock, their touchstone. After questioning the wisdom of anyone placing so much trust in a human, to those kind souls I would ask, “Was I your touchstone, or was my role your touchstone?” If it was my role as CEO or speaker or writer or pastor, then I might defer to the words of Jungian analyst James Hollis who writes, “I am not my roles; I am my journey.”

If it was my journey that intrigued you, then I might ask you to have patience. I know the realization I am now Paula has rocked you. But once the Mets have finished another losing season and the Knicks have yet again refused to play as a team, this information will no longer hold a place in your “I don’t know what to make of it” box. You will know what to make of it, and it will simply be what it is. And maybe, maybe not, but maybe you will see I am at my core the same person I was – a fellow human trying to live an authentic life in a problematic world.

Someone who met me not long ago said, “You look the same, only with makeup.” It was the first time I heard that! In reality it often takes people several minutes to believe I am really me. One neighbor kept saying I couldn’t be me and finally asked, “What’s my name?” When I answered correctly he said words I cannot print. So I am pretty sure I do not look the same. But my daughter had a suggestion, “Maybe this person thought they would not be able to find the person they knew in this new package, and they were surprised to find you very much there.” I hope my daughter is right. Those who spend a lot of time with me say I am definitely the same person, just a nicer version. (It’s easier to be nicer when you are not wasting valuable energy fighting who you are.)

Some of my work has ended. The truth is my interest in church planting and my enthusiasm for print media had been on the wane. On the other hand, my desire to mentor and counsel people in ministry has not abated. I have loved helping people discover the offering they might make to the world, and the vocation in which they are likely to excel. For the last decade or so it has been my most satisfying work. William Butler Yeats described the feeling it engenders in his poem Vacillation:

My fiftieth year had come and gone

I sat a solitary man

In a crowded London shop

An open book and empty cup

On the marble tabletop

As on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed

And twenty minutes more or less it seemed

So great my happiness

That I was blessed and could bless

I love blessing others. That many of those same people are now suffering because of me is difficult to accept. I have always been a person who wants to alleviate suffering, not be the cause it.

I have tried to make you aware of things pretty quickly after I have become aware of them myself. Since I have lived a public life I felt I had a responsibility to tell my story, though I knew it would not be well received. If I could have done it a little differently, I might have waited a bit to show you my picture. But I knew the whole difficult truth was not going to be real until you saw a picture of me, so I chose to post one. Some think that was wise. Some do not. Do I question the wisdom of it? I’ll let another stanza of Vacillation answer for me:

Although summer sunlight gild

Cloudy leafage of the sky

Or wintry moonlight sink the field

In storm scattered intricacy

I cannot look thereon

Responsibility so weighs me down

Things said or done long years ago

Or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do

Weigh me down and not a day

But something is recalled

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

Even among those who have been very supportive, it is extremely difficult to make the transition to seeing me as Paula. It is ironic, because my new friends cannot believe I was ever a man. But if you knew Paul for decades, it is just not as simple as waking up one morning and making the switch to Paula. Some of you will never be able to do it. That is all right.

One person wrote, “I am not overstating when I say this has taken me to a place of doubt.” Maybe you feel the same. I am sorry, but that is probably not a bad thing. Tennyson said, “There is more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” The fear of doubt is not about doubt. It is about change. And changing one’s gender definitely qualifies as change. Maybe there is a part of my change that frightens you. We would all like to believe our ego is in charge. But the truth is that we only grow when the ego is brought down. You watch someone who had a healthy dose of ego (not to mention entitlement), and you see him (now her) willingly shed that ego, give up that power, relinquish that entitlement, it frightens you. You ask yourself, “Do I have to do the same thing?”

And here is the thing. You do. Of course you do not have to change your gender, unless you are one of the few, but you will have to give up something precious. You will either have to willfully shed it, or you will have to put yourself in a place in which it is taken from you. Then your ego will be defeated. You will have wrestled with God and lost, which is of course a good thing.

All of this is difficult. It reminds you this is an imperfect world. It tells you things are not always what they appear to be. It informs you there are complex and perplexing realities we do not understand. It causes you to question what it means to be male or female. It makes you wish God spoke more clearly on a plethora of subjects, this one included. It creates cognitive dissonance. It disrupts the status quo. You would prefer to have gone through life without ever having had to deal with it.

Arianne, my neighbor across the street, put it succinctly, “Well, I’m thinking this is a game changer for pretty much everybody in your life.” True indeed. Most real changes do not occur until there is a massive disruption to a system. When it comes to my family system, this has been a massive disruption. I did not realize it would be quite a bit of a disruption to my faith family as well.

To those of you afraid for my soul, please do not be. I appreciate your concern, but I do not share it. To those of you just plain confused, it is okay. This confuses pretty much everybody. To those of you who want to be supportive but just cannot quite get there, that is okay too. I have a lot of support. You do not know any of these people, but they arrived quickly, in great force.

So, life goes on. Every day I awaken with little idea what the day is going to bring. Sometimes it is wonderful. Sometimes it is decidedly not. But always it is the life I have chosen, and I trust God to see me through. And that is enough.

 

Copyright c 2014 Paula S. Williams. This document is not to be reproduced or conveyed in any media, neither print nor electronic, without express, written permission of the author.

Our First Suffering

In his insightful book, The Middle Passage – From Misery to Meaning in Midlife, James Hollis says we acquire a “provisional identity during the first adulthood.” Early in life we need boundaries and the values of mom and dad. Without them we would be adrift in a vast ocean without a clue how to live.

There comes a time, however, when we realize our parents’ dreams for us were never our own. Novelist Colum McCann calls this our “first suffering.” He writes, “What is the source of our first suffering? It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us.” These silent things were actually within us from our first years.

In his autobiographical novel, James Agee writes, “All the large questions were asked by the child we once were, as we observed the big folk silently, as we lay in our beds at night, half-fearful, half-joyous to be alive. But the weight of the schooling, the parenting, and the acculturation process gradually replaces the child’s sense of awe with normative expectations and cultural certainties.”

Agee concludes by recalling how he was taken to bed when he was a child. He writes that he was taken to his bedroom by the big people, “as one familiar and well beloved in that home: but they will not, oh, will not, not now not ever, but will not ever tell me who I am.” No one can tell you who you are but you.

Fortunately life affords many opportunities to suffer and most of us are forced into a reluctant consciousness in which those ferocious first questions return, demanding answers. “Who am I?” James Hollis says, “If we are courageous enough, care enough about our lives, we may, through that suffering, get our lives back.”

Richard Rohr calls this “second half” the time when we become less concerned about being well known and successful, and more concerned about nurturing the soul. You are nearing a place where psychological wholeness and spiritual holiness come together. You are able to dialog with others because you can comfortably hold your own identity.

In this second half of life, with greater consciousness, your self-image comes from inside and not from the choices others make for you. You do what you are called to do and let go of the consequences. Sometimes what you must do may no longer feel like a choice, but a calling. Silence, poetry and story become your companions, not the community of strivers.

This second half is good. We settle into ourselves, our bodies no longer tools, but vessels that nurture one’s entire being.  Children and grandchildren are no longer accomplishments, but precious and mysterious gifts. With renewed confidence, this second half becomes a time when we do not hesitate to speak. We know the sound of the voice we hear, confident and clear. The voice is our own.

Acquainted With Loneliness

From deep inside the breast there is a loneliness that comes to all, a painful awareness we arrive and depart alone.  To be sure, there were those waiting on the platform when we arrived and there will be those waving wistfully as we leave.  Still, as Carl Sandburg suggests in Limited, one of his “Chicago Poems,” human existence is limited and most do not take the time to fully appreciate its brevity:

I am riding on a limited express, one of the crack trains


            of the nation.


Hurtling across the prairie into blue haze and dark air


            go fifteen all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.


(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust and all the men
    

            and women laughing in the diners and sleepers shall
    

            pass to ashes.)

I ask a man in the smoker where he is going and he
    

            answers: “Omaha.”

These days I hear the faint whistle of the train.  For most of my life I have not minded being alone.  I found myself to be tolerable, even pleasant, company.  When flying, I seldom struck up a conversation.  I enjoyed long silent road trips because they afforded the opportunity for rumination.  I was a public figure, speaking here and there, holding down multiple jobs.  The precious hours alone were cherished.  Back then I was alone but I was rarely lonely. Over the last several years, however, I have made the acquaintance of loneliness.  It leaves a stiff emptiness in the pit of your stomach, like going to bed without supper.

There is an old hymn that ends, “‘Tis midnight in the garden now, the suffering savior prays, alone.”  I spoke with my father.  He is 90.  He said, “Oh, I am lonely.  I wish you and your brother were here more, but I get by.”  I live 1,500 miles away.  My brother lives close but has a busy schedule.  I hung up the phone and thought, “So many lessons I must learn.” You have compassion for what you know. For the things you can only imagine, you attempt compassion and hope the attempt is enough. Sometimes it is.

On the subject of loneliness, I would prefer not to have made its acquaintance. It makes me very grateful for a few close fellow travelers.  When asked where they are going on the limited express, these are not friends who dismissively reply, “Omaha.”  These are friends who know where we are going, all of us.  At journey’s end they will run on the platform to the very last inch of pavement, waving and blowing kisses and holding my gaze into the fading light.

This post was written in 2013, but not published until now.  It was not written in response to my current circumstances.  To answer the question a lot of you have asked, I am not currently feeling lonely.  A lot of wonderful people have come into my life – Paula

Dear Reader,

Now I have gotten the responses I expected. A lot of you from the church world are really, really angry. You have made that clear. You are “disgusted,” “embarrassed” and above all else, sad. Some of you are sad for what my family and I have been through. Most of you are sad I have disappointed you. Today’s blog is for you.

Here is the truth. I will leave you alone. I will not try to return to your world. No one has to visit my blog. If you like, you can block it on your computer. I think we will both be happier.

But the subject is not going away. People like me are in your church right now. They are struggling and feeling hopeless. Almost half are considering ending their lives. I have heard from them. There are far more than you think. They love their church, but few are offering them any real hope. They are likely to either lose their own lives or lose most everything else. I know you would like them to go away, or you would like them all to be flamboyant cross dressers or drag queens you feel you can easily dismiss. But they are not. They are good people trying hard to be better people. You can pretend they are not there, but most of the developed world has come to realize it is time to let them live in some semblance of peace.

Time magazine recently suggested we have reached the tipping point on transgender issues. Just about every professional medical society in the world sees Gender Dysphoria as a legitimate diagnosis. Even the DSM V declassified it as a disorder. You can believe all these people are wrong if you like. It’s up to you.  But I would ask you to think about one thing.  In the rearview mirror, prejudice looks pretty ugly, from Galileo being placed under house arrest for his belief in a sun-centered solar system, to African-American people being forced to the back of the bus, to women not being given the right to vote.  Unfortunately the church was the culprit in the first, and complicit in the latter two.  Hardening of the categories is a dangerous illness.

My guess is that most of you will be furious with me for a while, and then you will forget about me, shaking your head when someone brings up my name. It’s all right. I knew that would happen when I chose to come out. And you will not take the time to really study what it means to be transgender because, well, you have more important things to do. Most people probably feel that way.

It’s not that I do not understand your anger. I was a person of influence. People trusted me. You feel I broke that trust and you are afraid my influence might remain among people who are more vulnerable. I understand where you are coming from, and I respect your right to see life as you feel God has led you to see it. Obviously, I see it differently.

So, let’s simply part ways. You don’t try to contact me, and I won’t try to contact you. I will build a new life, and you will go on with yours. And the world will go on turning.

Paula

PS.  For those who choose to remain, I will continue to write a weekly column.

Copyright c 2014 Paula S. Williams. This document is not to be reproduced or conveyed in any media, neither print nor electronic, without express, written permission of the author.

Any More Clarity?

Today I am going to answer a few more of your questions.

Since going public with this news, how have people responded?

I have been overwhelmed by the support I have received. It has been amazing and life sustaining. I am embarrassed to say I did not expect it. It has been a source of great encouragement.

One of the more surprising revelations has been the discovery of how many people saw me as a father figure. I had no idea. This news has taken many of them to a difficult place. Can they trust what they learned from me about being a man? Who am I to them now? These are difficult questions, and I wish I could be of more direct help.

Do you plan to continue working within the Christian church movement?

I have worked with Christian churches my entire life.  It is in my DNA.  However, every church and organization with which I served has chosen to end their work relationship with me.  I am still called to that work, however, so I will find a place in which to do it.  It pains me greatly that it will not be in the movement I love so much.

Some have suggested you are “advocating for something,” or “trying to justify yourself.” Are you, in fact, trying to justify yourself?

I did not see those accusations coming and I have been surprised. All I have wanted to do is explain a very difficult reality. That is what I have always done. I am an explainer, one who takes complicated material and makes it understandable to a broader audience. I have absolutely no expectation I will convince anyone of anything.

People tend to make up their own minds about these types of issues. Most choose to get on the cultural bandwagon that travels through their neck of the woods. If it is supportive of trans people, they are supportive. If it is not, they are not. Life is complicated. We can only personally study so many issues. On some subjects, particularly those we are inclined to see as esoteric, we let someone else decide for us. Do I believe this subject is esoteric?  No.  Do I wish everyone would study it for themselves?  Yes.  But most will not and I understand.

Do you have any more clarity about how you plan to proceed?

Yes, I do have more clarity. I have decided that moving forward authentically means moving forward as Paula. I am integrating Paul into Paula.  I know legions will disagree. I am sorry. As I said before, I do appreciate the advice of people who have not walked a mile in my shoes. But they have not walked a mile in my shoes. If the life I have lived is not enough to convince people this decision is all right, there is nothing I can say or do that will convince them otherwise.

How do you feel about the days ahead?

I pray I can move forward with wisdom and grace, and find the strength to speak the words of Dag Hammarskjold – “For all that has been, thanks. For all that shall be, yes.”

Copyright c 2014 Paula S. Williams. This document is not to be reproduced or conveyed in any media, neither print nor electronic, without express, written permission of the author.

 

 Answering Some of Your Questions

Your responses to the revelation I am transgender continue to move me so deeply – for their depth, love, concern, openness, integrity.  I cannot tell you how sustaining they are in these difficult times.   I have posted every comment and hope to be able to continue to do so. A number of people have contacted me in other ways to show their support and ask additional questions. In today’s blog I will attempt to answer some of your questions.

Why did you choose to write this information on your blog?

I kept this information private for a very long time.  As it began to take a toll I could no longer bear, I knew some people had to be told.  Unfortunately, over the past six months the information leaked out and began to work its way through the rumor mill.  Information coming back to me was very inaccurate.  After consulting with wise friends, I decided to tell the story accurately.  I had to believe the truth would set me free, though I knew it was likely to make me miserable first.

What do you hope comes from telling the story?

The truth is hard to tell and the truth is hard to tell.  That’s not a misprint.  I’ll explain. First, it is hard to tell others such deeply personal truth.  It is the hardest thing I have ever done.  Second, the truth is hard to discern when it comes to the subject of Gender Dysphoria.  So much misinformation abounds.  What is it?  What does God think about it?  How should we respond to those who are transgender?  These are difficult questions.  Whatever conclusions one might reach, it is definitely time to talk about it.  Outside the church the conversation has been going on for quite some time.  Inside the church, not so much.  I do hope out of my struggle a conversation will begin.

We care about you, but we are having a hard time putting our arms around this. What can we do?

Last week a respected friend wrote these words:

“What I often reflect on is how little I can truly deeply understand or feel what you have and are going through. It is not that I don’t want to understand. I just realize I have nothing to connect to. I can read (your document) and understand at just a mental objective level. I can accept it. But the experience is totally foreign. And that is not something I’ve ever encountered at this level. So I keep trying to empathize and go beyond understanding. It is still eluding me. Please don’t hear any of that as rejection, fear, being uncomfortable, etc. It is just the farthest outside my experience.”

My friend has expressed the sentiments of many. I have lived with this for 60 years. I have had ample time to process the information, yet I am still sometimes baffled by it. I spent years reading, going to therapy, praying and pondering as I tried to put my arms around what it meant. So I certainly understand how difficult it is for others to comprehend or accept.

Are there any resources you would recommend?

A good place to begin is Lana Wachowski’s speech at last year’s HRC banquet, easily accessible on YouTube. Lana and her brother directed the Matrix movies, among others. The 25-minute speech is informative and interesting. There are a number of books available on the subject, but the quality is spotty. I’d recommend beginning with Jennifer Boylan’s autobiography, She’s Not There.   Another good place to begin is the book, Transgender 101:  A Simple Guide to a Complex Issue.

How do you believe God sees you?

I believe God sees me as God sees you – as a precious being made in God’s image. If you are asking what God thinks about me being trans, well, you are asking the wrong person. You’ll have to ask God.

I believe authentic living demands discerning God’s will in difficult circumstances. Sometimes scripture speaks directly to those circumstances, but often things are not all that clear. We are left to our own accumulated wisdom. Several people have expressed their conviction this is a moral issue, and anyone who transitions to live as the opposite gender is living in sin. They often cite Genesis, but as I wrote in the original post, Genesis does not explain the plethora of intersex conditions. Every single day decisions are made in hospitals about naming the gender of infants born with ambiguous genitalia. I am afraid quoting Genesis is not going to satisfy those physicians, the parents, and especially those infants as they grow into adulthood. Humans are not always clearly male or female. This is a messy and imperfect world and the truth is that Gender Dysphoria is complex.

Those of us who are transgender are always grateful for people who come into our lives to support us and puzzle with us. We are not particularly interested in the advice of those who believe they can easily dispense with the issue in a paragraph or two. Humans are quick to reject, and even exterminate, people or things that do not fit into neatly defined categories. When we are frightened, hardening of the categories is a visceral response. But as higher beings, made in God’s image, we are invited to wonder over perplexing mysteries, not categorize and condemn them. Sometimes what is called for is a holy, anguished, “I don’t know.”

So, what are you going to do?

I don’t know.

Is that a holy, anguished, “I don’t know?”

I don’t know if it is holy, but I do know it is anguished.

And so it goes.

Copyright c 2014 Paul S. Williams. This document is not to be reproduced or conveyed in any media, neither print nor electronic, without express, written permission of the author.