Transgender

I was watching a long promotional video for the Oprah Winfrey Network, and falling in love with every show that would be on it, when a clip of a transgender male came on. He was making the transformation to be a woman, and it showed him after the transformation, a woman in her 50's standing in front of a mirror in just a nude colored bra and underwear. She stood staring at her rolls and her cellulite and tears came to her eyes and a smile spread across her face and she laughed and she said this was exactly how she felt she should be: that she was beautiful. I sat on my couch back home and cried. Cried because she could look at herself in the mirror not as a supermodel with perfect curves and smooth skin, but as a regular aging human being with fat and laugh for joy at the beauty of being a woman and being comfortable exactly the way you're supposed to be.

I searched for hours today to find that clip, and came up dry. But the memory of it will stay with me forever. When I look at my legs and wish they were smaller, and when I look at my belly above my jeans and wish it wasn't so blobby, I think of her standing in front of the mirror with joy.

I watched a lot of videos about transgender people today. People who can't help the way they are, people who know they're the opposite sex from when they're a child, parents crying and asking "who will love her? Who will accept her and love her as a lover someday?", christians demanding that they change their mindset instead of their bodies to solve the problem.

The world is not as it should be. People are born with disfigurations, diseases, mental problems, and hormonal imbalances. I have asthma and allergies: I cannot imagine someone telling me that God made me this way, therefore I should not seak to find restoration for my body and for my condition because He intends me to stay this way forever. I believe in seeking restoration, and I believe in seeking joy.

Jesus spent his time with the thieves and liers, the prostitutes and the beggers, the tax collectors, murderers, drunkards, gays and lesbians, and transgenders. He understood the why behind who they are. He loved them, accepted them, and he spoke truth and demanded righteousness. If Jesus spent his time with those people and they loved him, even while he demanded righteousness, and we attempt to spend time with those people and they hate us, there is a difference in the way we are approaching these people, and the way Jesus did. It's when we realize that we are these people that we can love, understand, and seek righteousness with them in their lives without judgment.

I want to love the mans daughter that he fears no one will ever love, I want to buy all of those who have had drinks thrown in their faces a drink at a bar. I want to take them out to dance at a club, I want to hold their hands in public, I want to go shopping with them, I want to laugh with them, and read the Bible with them, and find restoration as I share my life with them. I do not want to call them them, I want to include them in us.




4/4/11