This, my story... (part 1 of 4)

I remember the first time I knew I was trapped inside the wrong body. (Please stay with me here, I'll explain as I go...) It’s not like the body I was in didn’t feel like mine. It definitely did. It looked, smelled, and acted like me, and I basically liked me—including my body. But there was this strange feeling growing deep inside of me that I was living in a foreign place. (And I’ll be honest; at times it freaked me out!)

I’d be lying on the sofa in the middle of a Saturday afternoon and suddenly I’d get this weird feeling, like: "What is this life I’m living? Where did I come from and where am I going?" And this was at a pretty early age…maybe late elementary school or young teen years.

I grew up in a Christian family, which does not mean a perfect family, but a pretty good family... I had a mom (she’s still living—89 years old) and dad who loved me and taught me about God. I also grew up with two sisters, with about five years between us, and yes…I’m the middle child. My mom and dad taught me to obey certain rules, like: don’t go to movies, don’t dance, don’t have sex before marriage, etc. And they encouraged me to do certain things, like: play the piano with expression, care about what others think, share the gospel message, and give to the church and missions.

Because of the rules, I didn’t go to my first movie until age 13. It was The Poseidon Adventure, and I loved the experience of going to it with my best friend. But it wasn’t my first step into life beyond the rules. A few years earlier I had fiercely debated my mom over the pros and cons (or apparent indecencies) of dancing in gym class. It was a thrilling day when I finally won, and got to dance the gym class away with all of my peers. The victory was relished…even though I knew the only reason she gave in was because I told her that another church elder’s son was dancing with the class. Nevertheless, it was a victory in truth for me. I couldn’t see why it was wrong, and it turned out I was right. Or at least my argued assumption was determined reasonable enough to allow me to dance in that direction.

You might think I was a little resentful about being raised a Christian, but I really wasn’t. I had started reading through the Bible (a modern paraphrase of it) in late elementary school, and the seed of faith that was in my heart grew as I read and prayed, and sensed God’s presence in my life. I loved God and Jesus and knew that my prayers were heard and answered, even though they didn’t always get answered in the way I was praying they would. And as my faith grew, so did this awareness of being trapped inside a body…
(continued in part 2)