Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E282: From Testosterone to Three Under Three: Lex's Journey of Gender & Sexuality | Lila Rose Show

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E282: From Testosterone to Three Under Three: Lex's Journey of Gender & Sexuality | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

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  You lived as a man for 14 years, yes, and you're sitting here
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  pregnant with your third. Miracle baby after I had cancer
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  in my womb, diagnosed by Planned Parenthood for seven years of
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  being on testosterone. The hospital made him leave
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  because he's never had a death on his record.
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  And I was supposed to be the first death on his record.
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  When I rededicated my life at 17, the Lord said I'm going to
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  wow you. I love bringing you the most
• 0:26
  important conversations and commentary here at the Lila Rose
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  Lex Renick, welcome to the podcast.
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  How do you think? Thank you so much for having me.
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  I'm so glad you're here. It was just meant to be.
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  It's a it's a God moment. It was I've been thinking about
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  you and wanting you to come on and then you told me when we
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  were just talking that you were praying about shows you wanted
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  to go on and you're and my show was in your heart.
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  And then that day you got a contact from us.
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  Yes, I'm like, Lord, you're so great.
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  And so this, this is meant to be.
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  It's really meant. To be.
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  I might start crying. I mean, I'm a crier.
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  We are. We have the tissue boxes.
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  OK. You lived as a man for 14 years.
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  Yes, and you're sitting here pregnant with your third.
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  Miracle baby after I had cancer in my womb, diagnosed by Planned
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  Parenthood for seven years of being on testosterone and God
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  did what he did and now I can't stop getting pregnant so.
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  Wow, yes. So there's so much to hear about
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  your story. You're also married.
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  Yes, to a man which I never thought would ever be my life.
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  And he has his own testimony because he was living the gay
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  lifestyle and thought decided he was gay but now he's married to
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  a woman and having children. Yes.
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  Yes, there's so much to go into today.
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  So let's start at the beginning, when you first experienced maybe
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  gender dysphoria. Also about your childhood where
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  you grew up. Yeah.
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  So I grew up in Corona, CA very, you know, not not too far.
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  So Southern California and my mom and dad were both in
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  ministry. So I was at church about five
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  days a week. But little did people know
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  behind closed doors, you know, it was almost like they were
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  saying they were a Christian. And so from a very young age, I
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  had this anger and animosity towards the Lord because I
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  experienced so much abuse. There's alcohol mixed with
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  pills, you know, that leads to nothing good.
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  And so unfortunately, adultery happened within my family line.
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  And once my father was removed, it was like the devil was like,
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  this is the perfect time to come in, bring confusion and just
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  take this little girl's innocence away.
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  And so that's when I had my innocence ripped away from at
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  the age of 5 from a man and a woman.
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  And from then on, I experienced a lot of sexual abuse at a young
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  age. And when you were experiencing
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  all this, so your dad was out of the household, your parents had
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  split up, do you have siblings? I do.
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  And do you and you have memories of this abuse?
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  You're 5. And what do you remember in
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  terms of your feelings as a kid? You're having this instability
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  in the home. Your dad's gone.
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  There was also instability even when he was there between your
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  parents. You were describing some of the,
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  you know, substances, quite frankly, in the house and the
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  behavior that can come with that.
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  Did you ever feel safe growing up?
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  I would say no. I would say the only times that
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  I truly felt safe were when I was with my dad and, you know,
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  sober. The camping trips, you know,
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  more so on that side of the family because the abuse always
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  happened on my mom's side of the family, unfortunately.
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  And I think as my father too, just having a conversation with
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  him, he takes a lot of that responsibility and that hurt and
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  that pain that he wasn't there to protect me.
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  And I don't blame my dad and you know, and any means.
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  But we know now that when a father is removed, the the
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  importance of having a father, not only as a spiritual father,
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  but as a protector. That's why the enemy is so after
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  the family line, you know, because the importance of having
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  a father present. And during this time you were
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  your family was going to church. That was a part of the life.
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  Did did did anybody at church in your childhood view?
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  You know, again, you're just a kid.
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  Have any sense of what was happening in the home?
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  No, I don't think so. My mom was head of PTA, you
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  know, she was, she's a wonder. She was a wonderful woman.
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  She's with the Lord now. And it's always so hard to talk
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  about the past, but it's a, it's a testimony for a reason.
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  And it's not because I I want to speak I'll of my mom.
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  I truly believe that alcoholism is called spirits for a reason.
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  Alcohol is called spirits. We are vessels.
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  And some of the things that were spoken and done to me as a
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  child, I believe that it wasn't from my mom.
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  It was the cause of the alcohol. So, and, and when you were
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  experiencing abuse as a kid, it was not your mother, it was
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  family members that she gave them access to.
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  She didn't know this was happening.
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  And then you became prey. Yes, growing up more just your
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  experience as you remember as a child.
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  How did you interpret what's happening to you?
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  That's a good question. I, as an adult, I guess you
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  could say I didn't really put the pieces together until I was
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  in therapy specifically for gender therapy.
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  And that's when my therapist was like, OK, when are we going to
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  start talking about these things?
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  And she started bringing it to my attention.
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  That's when I realized that ever since I was young, I always
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  objectified myself. I only viewed myself as someone
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  that could offer something because something was always
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  taken away from me. So as a child, from a very young
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  age, as as a child, I just felt like I was only worth my body.
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  Yeah. At what point did you start to
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  understand that the abuse was abuse?
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  Growing up as a kid? Because usually a 5 year old,
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  they're going to be scared or they're going to have, you know,
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  a lot of painful experiences with it, but they're too young
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  necessarily unless someone's taught them to understand this
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  is wrong, shouldn't be happening and.
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  I didn't realize until I was 18 and it was like once I had that
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  therapy session, all the memories flooded in.
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  And I had I had spotted memories here and there of things that
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  were done and it wasn't done by by family necessarily.
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  It was more so family friends or other men that were being
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  brought into the home after the divorce.
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  And that's when I started putting things together like
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  what happened to me here and what happened to me there.
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  And even just last year, I realized that some of the kids
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  that I lived with, with my dad, it was like all the moms
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  divorced their husbands at the same time.
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  And all the dads decided, let's just get a house together and
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  let's just let our kids all run free together.
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  Things were happening between, you know, kids that I grew up
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  with there. And so even now as an adult,
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  seeing them on social media, it's, it's triggering to be
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  like, they did that to me as a kid, but who did that to them
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  for them to know to do that to me?
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  And it's. Yeah.
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  Do you think that the the church element, did that make, was
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  there any outlet for you in that?
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  So you grew up going on Sundays to church.
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  Was your but and also was your dad and mom still going to the
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  church at the same time or did they switch up churches after?
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  No, I feel like once the divorce happened, it was just kind of
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  like we still went on Sundays every now and then, and then it
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  just kind of fell off. So do you have any memories
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  growing up of a connection with God, an experience of God?
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  More so religion and because of that, because of the divorce,
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  because of the abuse, because of the, because it, it was physical
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  abuse. You know, I, I'll never forget
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  cops showing up to my house and me having handprints of my mom,
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  you know, from choking me, breaking down doors to stop her
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  from attempting suicide, You know, just just very, very
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  traumatic. Like cop car lights and
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  ambulances were my childhood. That's one of the chapters in my
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  memoir I'm writing right now. And it's hard to talk about
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  that, that past. But I had so much anger with God
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  and with religion in general because I'm like, if you're all
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  this all loving God, then why did I have parents that have
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  done this to me? Why did I grow up with
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  Alcoholics and addicts? And I had this pain and this
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  anger, and that's exactly what the devil wanted to use as a
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  foothold to get me to not have a relationship with Jesus.
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  You mentioned feeling safe on camping trips with your dad.
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  That was kind of a little respite from the chaos and the
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  hurt. Was there an adult growing up
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  that you knew growing up that you felt consistently safe with?
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  Yeah, I would say my Aunt Paulette, yeah, she was the only
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  spiritual leader in my life and Christian woman in my life that
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  even during my transition and identifying as Austin, even
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  though she was uncomfortable with it, she still pursued me
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  and and still blessed me. And I would say she represented
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  the Father well. Now, there was sometimes where
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  it felt really judgmental, but there were other times where she
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  would just bless me beyond measure and I would think, wow.
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  Or is this how Christians are supposed to be?
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  You know, like she even showed up to a party that we had.
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  It was a birthday party for me. I think I was like 20 maybe or
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  19. This was after transition.
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  This yeah, this is yeah, this is like kind of like when I'm
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  transitioning and and it's very popular in the trans community
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  to have almost this like death to your old self reborn date.
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  So my cake even said it's boy. And you know, I'm sure she felt
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  uneasy being invited to this event as a Christian woman, but
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  she knew that I asked her for a Bible for my gift.
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  And she felt like the Lord was telling her to still go.
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  And so she showed up and she said, hey, happy birthday.
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  Just want to say I love you. I'm not here to celebrate what
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  this cake says. She said that she said that to
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  me, but she said it in a way where she set a boundary.
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  But she's like, but I'm here to love you and I'm here to give
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  you a gift. And that same Bible that my Aunt
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  Paulette gave me is the same Bible that I travel the world
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  with, that I share the good news of Jesus with, that I speak at
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  women's conference with. And to be able to hold that no,
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  that the world and you know, maybe some Christians might have
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  judged her for attending. She obeyed the Lord and that
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  same Bible is the same Bible where I had all my encounters
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  with the with the Lord getting into the Word and eventually
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  dying to self because of her obedience and loving me through
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  the process of identifying as Austin.
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  When she was at this it's a boy party.
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  You're 20, you're transitioning and she's giving you a Bible as
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  a Christian woman and she says I don't support the this part, but
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  I love you. Were you annoyed when she said
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  that? Were you offended?
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  I knew my aunt's place. I wanted her so desperately
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  right to affirm, but I respected the fact that she still showed
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  up and in love of me because I was already experiencing so much
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  rejection from the church, so much rejection from family, that
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  it just meant so much that she showed up.
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  So I think I was more so focused on that than anything else.
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  So at what point? Let's go back to early, you
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  know, post 5, but before 20, those kind of prevubescent and
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  then teenage years. At what point did you start to
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  think maybe I'm not a I'm not a girl, I'm a boy?
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  Youngest age again, when the sexual trauma just started
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  happening at 5:00. So we have we were the house
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  with the pool and the pool parties.
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  And you know, everyone came over and I grew up with a lot of boys
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  and I'll never forget running, jumping into the pool, taking
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  off my shirt just like the boys and my mom immediately pulling
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  me out saying like, NI hao, you can't do that.
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  Like you're you're a girl, you're not a boy.
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  And me looking at her really confused, thinking like, no, I'm
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  a boy. So it, it started from a very
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  young age. And so I remember actually
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  overhearing my mom and my dad arguing because my mom thought
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  that my dad told her a story about me.
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  So when I was actually in my mom's womb, they told my mom
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  that they were going to have a boy.
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  And so they picked out my name to be Austin.
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  So it's just kind of so weird, the synchronicities within that,
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  that I ended up struggling with my gender identity.
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  And you? How old were you when you heard
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  them talking about this? That was when I was already
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  saying things, so that's I wanted to say maybe 7-8 years
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  old. And your dad was upset that your
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  mom had. No, my mom was upset at my dad
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  thinking like you confused her. Did you tell her that story?
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  And my dad, like I never said anything like this to her.
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  And so that's when I feel like there was just the spiritual
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  attack from, from the devil. We could see it now that the
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  devil's so after our, our kids innocence.
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  And it was like once my innocence was removed, there was
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  all this confusion because something that was created for
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  intimacy between a husband and a wife was, was touched, you know,
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  and it, it just brought so much confusion.
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  And then Google came out and that just wasn't good for anyone
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  in my age group at the time. And I would say that maybe I was
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  11 and that's when I started Googling.
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  I'm a girl, but I feel like I'm a boy trapped in a girl's body.
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  And I didn't, this wasn't pushed on me.
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  You know, this, it's not like it was pushed in like it is in
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  schools today or, you know, on Disney or whatever today.
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  And that's when the word transgender came up.
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  And this is when the first iPod, you know, Touch came out where
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  you could go on the Internet and that word transgender came up.
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  And I, it was everything that I was feeling.
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  And it was like for the first time, I didn't feel like I was
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  the only one suffering with this gender dysphoria.
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  And, and the world sold me this recipe of everything that I can
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  do to make it go away. And it wasn't Jesus, it was
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  Planned Parenthood, it was a testosterone injection.
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  It was a name change. It was mutilating my body.
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  And that's when the lie was sold to me.
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  So you're 11 years old. Is it around then you first
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  really understand that word transgender?
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  You're Googling it literally. So nobody else was saying this
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  word to you. And in terms of the dynamics at
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  home, you already talked about the abuse, the chaos.
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  Did other kids, though, like your cousins or siblings or
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  other people you're interacted with say, oh, you're like a boy?
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  I mean, were you kind of tomboyish?
• 14:25
  I. Was very tomboyish I would say.
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  The only thing that I that I could see now on the other side
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  of things that I know have has had some type of effect on me
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  was being very young and Katy Perrys.
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  I Kissed A girl came out and my mom, her one of her really good
• 14:40
  friends she'd have wine with. We would be hanging out and that
• 14:43
  song came on the radio and her, her friend would say, Oh, Lex,
• 14:47
  sing this song, This is your song.
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  I was just telling my husband this, that, that this memory was
• 14:51
  coming back to me and how it affected me and how I would
• 14:55
  think like, why is she saying that this song is my song?
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  And my mom would say too. She would say, why, why are you
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  saying that? And, and Terry would say, Oh,
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  that's because, you know, we, we know.
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  We know. That's so evil.
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  I know. I don't even know.
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  Like 8 or 9. Between maybe the ages of around
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  the same time, like 6 to 9 years old.
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  And it's just the power of suggestion, not.
• 15:17
  Only that, but we know what the Bible says There's there's power
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  of speaking life and death in the power of the tongue.
• 15:23
  And I feel like even that being spoken over me of like, Oh yeah,
• 15:26
  this is your song. And the chorus is I kissed a
• 15:28
  girl and I liked it. And then I only dated women up
• 15:31
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  I know this person is experiencing in terms of the so
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  you have the gender dysphoria, you think you're a boy and a
• 17:07
  girl's body. Then you also have same sex
• 17:10
  attraction. Tell me about what that
• 17:12
  experience was was like early on, earlier on?
• 17:15
  Yeah, Earlier on I, I noticed that I was very attracted to
• 17:18
  women that were super affectionate, very loving.
• 17:22
  On the other side of things. I could see that.
• 17:24
  That's because I desired that within my mom.
• 17:26
  My mom was drinking all the time.
• 17:28
  There was not, she wasn't much of A hugger.
• 17:30
  There wasn't a lot of affection. Again, it's so hard to talk
• 17:34
  about, you know, my mom in this light, but I just want to
• 17:37
  emphasize like it's because I want to bring God glory and we
• 17:40
  have to talk about the hardship. I don't want to talk negatively
• 17:43
  or I'll of, of my mother being dead now, but I desired this
• 17:50
  womanly, motherly, you know, affectionate presence with a
• 17:54
  woman. And I started dating women when
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  I was 13, you know, just like a preteen.
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  And from then on, I, I continued to, to pursue, pursue women.
• 18:04
  And I asked the Lord, you know, at the end of the day, you know,
• 18:07
  Fast forward, I'm like, Lord, why was I attracted to women?
• 18:10
  Like, I want to know, I feel like it is part of the healing
• 18:12
  process. Like, why was I attracted to
• 18:14
  women? And the Lord's like you were
• 18:16
  never actually attracted to a woman.
• 18:18
  You're attracted to having a mother.
• 18:20
  And because my mom was drunk all the time, because I didn't have
• 18:26
  her be what I needed, I sought that out in another way, you
• 18:34
  know, in a perverted way than just having a mom.
• 18:37
  And I'm really glad that the Lord revealed that to me because
• 18:40
  I feel like it's healed me now as a mom to be affectionate and
• 18:44
  to show up and to be present, to be kind to my girls.
• 18:48
  Yeah. You said at 13 you started
• 18:53
  dating other girls. Yes.
• 18:56
  Were was there another woman in your life that was affectionate
• 18:59
  with you? No.
• 19:01
  Happened to that point. No, I had a teacher, I forgot
• 19:05
  her name, but she used to call everyone pumpkin.
• 19:08
  And I remember being a freshman in high school being like, why
• 19:12
  does that make me feel so good? And I think it's because the
• 19:16
  inner child within me really just wanted that motherly
• 19:19
  affection. And it totally makes sense
• 19:24
  because when things came down to like intimacy and things with
• 19:27
  women that like when they started saying that they were in
• 19:30
  love with me and stuff, that's when it would, I would start to
• 19:33
  feel weird. So it makes sense on the other
• 19:36
  side of things now that like I, I truly just desired just
• 19:41
  motherly affection. Do you remember the point that
• 19:45
  the desire for motherly affection became sexualized?
• 19:48
  Because I think that's like a distinction that a lot of people
• 19:52
  gloss over in our culture today. We sexualize affection and we're
• 19:56
  starved for touch, we're starved for warmth, we're starved for
• 20:01
  affection. But then we then sex kind of
• 20:04
  becomes sexual contact instead it becomes this replacement.
• 20:07
  That's so true. Yeah.
• 20:08
  I had, I just had this desire, you know, for the affection and
• 20:13
  everyone around me was like, oh, that means that you're a lesbian
• 20:16
  or, you know, that means that you're gay.
• 20:18
  And so acting upon that, like going beyond doing the nails or
• 20:23
  whatever, which I was never the type to do that because I was
• 20:25
  not girly, you know, but going beyond the hugging or, or the
• 20:29
  affection that is non sexual. It, it was something that felt
• 20:35
  like, I don't know, like like like I desired, like I needed.
• 20:38
  I'm not going to say that I the attraction wasn't there because
• 20:41
  it totally was, but it was incredibly lustful.
• 20:44
  And I felt the butterflies. I felt all the things that you
• 20:48
  feel when you're a young preteen and you're, you know, feeling
• 20:51
  the hormones and everything. What was the experience of both
• 20:57
  identifying, beginning to identify as trans and are you
• 21:00
  identifying as a lesbian? Because if you're trans and
• 21:03
  you're not a lesbian, so how did you begin to see your identity
• 21:07
  when you're around this age, about kind of puberty, early
• 21:10
  teens? So normally with people that
• 21:13
  identify as trans, it kind of goes with the flow, like it's
• 21:16
  the sexuality first and then it's the gender.
• 21:19
  And so for me, at first I identified as just being gay or
• 21:22
  being a lesbian. And then and when I googled and
• 21:26
  realized like, oh, OK, like this, there's actually word for
• 21:29
  this, that's when I started identifying as Austin at 13.
• 21:33
  And so this was before it was again, pushed on kids or pushed
• 21:38
  in schools. But The thing is even at that
• 21:40
  age of being in middle school, they were not telling my parents
• 21:44
  that I was identifying as Austin.
• 21:45
  They were not telling my parents that I was using the boys
• 21:47
  restroom. And I was doing all of those
• 21:49
  things even in high school as well.
• 21:51
  And my parents were not notified about that.
• 21:54
  Where is this? Is this a public school?
• 21:56
  A public school in Soco? And this was about what?
• 21:59
  You're so young. So this was like 13 years ago
• 22:02
  ish. Probably.
• 22:04
  I'm 28, so I graduated in 2015. So it was within the last two
• 22:10
  decades and publicly, are you asking your teachers to call you
• 22:14
  Austin? And they are.
• 22:16
  And they are, yeah. And not a word is said to any
• 22:20
  parents or anybody. No one knew about it.
• 22:21
  It was like I was living these dual lives.
• 22:23
  I was Lex at home, but the minute that I got out of the car
• 22:27
  and I was at school, I was Austin.
• 22:29
  And that's why my testimony, I say I lived my life this way for
• 22:31
  14 years because I did for the 1414 years total, seven years
• 22:36
  without transitioning up. And but you know, like living it
• 22:40
  out and then the other seven, that's when I turn 18.
• 22:43
  And that's when my dad's like, I don't agree with this, but
• 22:46
  you're waiting until you're 18. And I asked him to sign the
• 22:50
  forms. I asked him to let me get on,
• 22:53
  you know, hormone blockers and all that.
• 22:55
  And I'm so beyond grateful that he said.
• 22:58
  No. So you you did not go on puberty
• 23:02
  blockers? No, because your dad would not
• 23:04
  let you. He would not let me, he would
• 23:05
  not sign off on it. And it got to a point with my
• 23:09
  mom's alcohol and all of that, where she eventually kicked me
• 23:12
  out multiple times. And that's when I got kicked
• 23:15
  out. Lived with my dad in Big Bear
• 23:17
  Lake, CA graduated high school there, met my husband there.
• 23:21
  And yeah, yeah, so. What was what was it like then
• 23:25
  for somebody who believes they are first lesbian, now trans,
• 23:29
  and you're going through puberty?
• 23:30
  I think it's important to notate that everyone feels weird when
• 23:34
  they go through puberty and that's OK.
• 23:37
  We all go through a weird phase, but not.
• 23:39
  But nowadays it's like if you're uncomfortable wearing a dress or
• 23:43
  if you're uncomfortable maybe like putting on makeup, then
• 23:47
  people are saying, oh, well, that means that you're trans or
• 23:49
  that means that you're a boy. No, that just means that you're
• 23:51
  a tomboy and that's totally OK. But because I was those things,
• 23:55
  the world started telling me not like, Oh no, you are trans and
• 23:58
  like you, you do need these hormones and you know, this
• 24:01
  surgery and all of that. So I would say at the time,
• 24:04
  identifying and struggling with because it was real, it was
• 24:08
  demonic. It was horrific.
• 24:11
  The thoughts that would go through my head identifying as
• 24:15
  Austin and and going through puberty as a female, having my
• 24:21
  period and my breasts grow. I would look in the mirror and I
• 24:24
  swear I would, I would hear demons tell me that I was
• 24:27
  worthless, that I should just kill myself because those are
• 24:30
  things that were also spoken over me when when my mom would
• 24:33
  be drinking and I would look in the mirror and as as my I had
• 24:37
  breast at the time, I would literally bloodlet, I would
• 24:39
  start cutting myself with a razor blade in the mirror and
• 24:44
  just make these almost like blood covenants with the devil
• 24:46
  because I hated my body so much. Like it was like I would look in
• 24:51
  the mirror and be like, why do I look like a boy with boobs?
• 24:55
  And I know it probably sounds so crazy to the world that's
• 24:58
  watching this interview or maybe even to someone that hasn't
• 25:01
  experienced what I experienced. But I think it's so important
• 25:04
  for us to know that those in the trans community, they are
• 25:06
  struggling with something very spiritual, the enemy's.
• 25:09
  So after our identity, you know, and, and as I was looking in the
• 25:14
  mirror, just cutting myself and just hearing the lies of the
• 25:17
  enemy, I just was so disgusted with myself.
• 25:20
  It was this self hatred that would constantly grow.
• 25:24
  And so my stepdad would be like, where did all my duct tape go?
• 25:28
  He had no idea that I was duct taping my chest in the bathroom
• 25:31
  just to make it flat, to feel comfortable or to try and blend
• 25:36
  in as a biological male. And at the end of the day when I
• 25:41
  would take off the the duct tape, I would peel off my skin.
• 25:44
  And even to this day, not only do I have top surgery scars for
• 25:48
  mutilating my body, but I also have scars from the days of
• 25:51
  ripping off duct tape as a kid. Did you ever have anyone, any
• 25:56
  adults in your life, affirm you as a girl and talk to you about
• 26:01
  puberty and affirm your growing body as a little girl now
• 26:05
  becoming a woman? I would say my mom, like my mom
• 26:09
  would try and have the conversation with me, but would
• 26:12
  I say that I was listening? No, it's it's the same narrative
• 26:16
  that we hear and see nowadays where it's like, well, if you
• 26:18
  don't accept me that I don't want you in my life, you know,
• 26:20
  type situation. And I think my mom tried, I
• 26:23
  think at times when she was sober, she tried to say, like,
• 26:26
  you're a girl, babe. Like it's OK if you're a tomboy,
• 26:29
  you know, like it. It's OK if you like these boy
• 26:32
  things, but you are a girl. So I did have, you know, people
• 26:35
  in my life that said those things.
• 26:37
  But to me, even though they're affirming that God didn't make a
• 26:41
  mistake in me, the way that I would hear, it was like, you
• 26:44
  don't love me. You're rejecting me.
• 26:47
  You don't have anything to do with me so.
• 26:49
  Because they didn't say, OK, you know, you're Austin and you're a
• 26:53
  boy to me. With a delusion.
• 26:54
  Yeah, they didn't. They didn't agree with the
• 26:56
  delusion. But I would say that what we're
• 26:59
  seeing today with people being so like, you either love me or
• 27:03
  we're done. That's not how it was for me.
• 27:05
  I I so desperately wanted to have my family in my life.
• 27:08
  I so desperately wanted to find some type of middle ground.
• 27:12
  Like for example, when I started really going by Austin and he,
• 27:16
  my mom would say, I feel like she would say I feel like I'm
• 27:19
  sinning, you know, because I, I, I feel like I'm agreeing with
• 27:23
  this lie from the devil and, and you're my daughter.
• 27:27
  And I would say, OK, mom, But like when you're not affirming
• 27:32
  me or when you're not calling me Austin or if you're not calling
• 27:35
  me he, it makes me feel I, you would use the word, it would
• 27:38
  make me feel unsafe or it makes me feel like, you know, you
• 27:41
  don't love me at the end of the day.
• 27:43
  Can we find some middle ground? And so we ended up landing on
• 27:47
  she wasn't going to call me he, but she would at least call me
• 27:49
  Austin. I'm like then, then.
• 27:51
  And then when you reference me, you just say like, oh, my middle
• 27:53
  child. And and I'm glad that we found
• 27:56
  that type of middle ground because it made me feel
• 27:58
  comfortable enough to still hang out with her and rebuild this
• 28:00
  relationship once she got sober. And my aunt, she kind of did the
• 28:04
  same thing. She didn't call me he.
• 28:06
  She would unbearingly, you know, call me Austin every now and
• 28:10
  then, but it was enough for me to feel like I wanted to create
• 28:15
  the lasting, you know, relationship.
• 28:17
  And then my aunt would say things like, hey, do you want to
• 28:19
  go to a concert? I got free tickets.
• 28:21
  She'd take me to go see Phil Wickham or Elevation Worship or,
• 28:24
  you know, some type of Christian band.
• 28:26
  And we found that type of middle ground.
• 28:28
  And I do feel like it. It showed that they were going
• 28:32
  to love me where I was at. Even if they didn't agree, they
• 28:35
  still set boundaries. Like my aunt, for example, I
• 28:38
  would talk about my girlfriends. She would say nothing and I so
• 28:43
  bad because again, we talked about, you know, spiritual
• 28:45
  leaders or, or women in our life that that, you know, affected
• 28:49
  me. She wouldn't say anything
• 28:50
  because the Lord would say, don't say anything.
• 28:53
  And she didn't. And I remember thinking at the
• 28:55
  end of of that visit, I'd laid my head on my pillow and I'd,
• 28:59
  I'd ask the Lord, why didn't my aunt say anything when I talked
• 29:02
  about my girlfriends? She's so nice, she's so loving.
• 29:05
  She's taking me to all these events.
• 29:07
  She's a Christian. Like, why didn't?
• 29:08
  Because I was looking for someone to affirm me.
• 29:10
  I was looking for someone to say, hey, it's OK.
• 29:13
  When the world was saying that my attractions were wrong.
• 29:16
  I was looking for permission, you know, to continue to live
• 29:20
  this out. And so I because she said
• 29:22
  nothing and she was obedient to the Lord within that, but still
• 29:25
  loved me. I started taking my questions to
• 29:28
  the Lord. Did you think it was the right
• 29:30
  call? It's, it's very interesting that
• 29:32
  this was this stable person in your life who loved God, who
• 29:36
  ultimately loved you through your experience of being
• 29:40
  transgender. And we're going to get to, you
• 29:42
  know, the conversion, which is just totally incredible.
• 29:45
  But she did relent and call you Austin a few times.
• 29:49
  That sounds like it wasn't a frequent thing.
• 29:51
  But that was that was like, was that your boundary?
• 29:53
  Like you can't be in a relationship with me if you
• 29:55
  don't call me this. Yeah.
• 29:57
  What was that dynamic like? It's very much like that in the
• 30:00
  trans community. It's like, well, if you don't
• 30:01
  call me this, then I don't want to hang out with you.
• 30:03
  And so she took it and she she took the deal and she was like,
• 30:06
  OK, I'm going to call you Austin.
• 30:07
  I don't agree with what you're how you're living.
• 30:10
  But you know, Austin technically could be a girl's name.
• 30:12
  I mean, most names you could there are.
• 30:15
  I mean, I don't know that I've never met in Austin who's a
• 30:17
  girl, but you know, you can use nicknames.
• 30:19
  You can. And so in her view, she's like,
• 30:21
  this doesn't mean I'm affirming Lex as a man.
• 30:26
  It's more that Lex just likes this name.
• 30:29
  I'm just. I'm curious how, if she
• 30:31
  verbalized that to you, did she verbalize kind of why she was
• 30:34
  going along that way? Because at the same time, she's
• 30:36
  also trying to be very intentional about not affirming
• 30:39
  your lesbianism, etcetera. Yeah.
• 30:42
  And she, she went about it in a way of like she would say Lex
• 30:45
  and she was, I would say Auntie Austin, you know, Austin.
• 30:49
  And then she'd be like, OK, whatever.
• 30:51
  And she would say it. But I knew the whole time, you
• 30:55
  know, her perspective, what she believed in.
• 30:58
  And she sometimes it would come out and sometimes she would call
• 31:00
  me Lex and I would take it for what it was.
• 31:03
  And the times that she did call me Austin, it did make me feel
• 31:07
  good. But again, I really believe that
• 31:10
  we could be so legalistic sometimes with being like, oh, I
• 31:13
  don't know. I don't want to say this because
• 31:15
  I don't want them to think that I agree or that it's OK.
• 31:19
  But here's the thing. The devil wants division.
• 31:22
  The devil wants people that are struggling with whatever sin
• 31:26
  they're struggling with to not be around believers.
• 31:29
  So the devil wants this divide. And I feel like if she didn't
• 31:33
  give in at least once or twice, I probably would have never had
• 31:36
  a relationship with her. I probably would have never had
• 31:38
  these experiences. And so we actually have a a
• 31:41
  coaching that we teach through our ministry called truth and
• 31:44
  love where we go in depth on the things to say and the things not
• 31:48
  to say. And often times it's not a
• 31:50
  one-size-fits-all. We always tell families, pray
• 31:52
  and fast about it because I understand that you're so
• 31:55
  worried. You don't you don't want them to
• 31:57
  think like I'm accepting of them or this false identity or I'm
• 32:01
  agreeing with them. But at the same time, my dad
• 32:04
  sought the Lord and when I got kicked out of of my mom's house,
• 32:09
  my dad at that, at that point I had three suicide attempts.
• 32:12
  My dad's like, I don't care what you want me to call you.
• 32:14
  You're my daughter at the end of the day, but I want you alive
• 32:17
  and I, I want you here and I want to be in your life.
• 32:20
  And so he, he felt like he had permission from the Lord to call
• 32:24
  me Austin. Come to find out, he never
• 32:28
  believed that I was his son. He never believed, you know, he
• 32:31
  knew that I was his daughter that was struggling with, with
• 32:33
  gender identity. But that created such an
• 32:36
  opportunity for me to feel safe enough for that barrier to be
• 32:39
  broken between us. For him to still be a spiritual
• 32:42
  leader in my life, for him to still pray for me through the
• 32:46
  confusion and the delusion that I was struggling with.
• 32:49
  So I know it's such a fine line that some people are unsure to
• 32:54
  walk. And that's why, why we always
• 32:55
  say you have to pray, you have to fast, you have to seek the
• 32:58
  Lord and you can be honest and open just like I just said and
• 33:01
  said, Hey, honey, I, I, I know that this is what you want to be
• 33:05
  called. I know that this is the, the
• 33:07
  gender that you want to go by. At the end of the day, we
• 33:09
  believe what the Bible says and we know that God made you a
• 33:12
  woman. If this is what's going to make
• 33:14
  you comfortable, OK, we can find some middle ground.
• 33:17
  But I, I love you and I want to walk with this with you.
• 33:21
  Did your parents know that you chose Austin because you had
• 33:24
  overheard that conversation and they said when they thought that
• 33:27
  when your mother was pregnant with you, there was a boy, they
• 33:29
  were going to call you Austin? Yeah, because once I actually
• 33:32
  found that out, one like because I didn't know about that story.
• 33:36
  When I found out that that's really what happened and my dad
• 33:39
  heard that I was legally changing my name at 18, he asked
• 33:42
  me what are you changing it to? And I'm, and I literally said,
• 33:45
  well, you already named me Dad, you chose Austin.
• 33:47
  So I'm going to go by Austin. Was he upset?
• 33:50
  No, it was just kind of like an awkward conversation, I guess
• 33:53
  you could say, like there is no happy, there is no sad.
• 33:56
  But it's so hard looking back at those moments to now, you know,
• 33:59
  because I, I realized that maybe the way that I perceived it then
• 34:03
  was not really the reality of it.
• 34:05
  Now that makes sense. It's really hard to find good
• 34:09
  content to watch with my kids for when they are allowed to
• 34:11
  have screen time. I'm always on the lookout for
• 34:13
  low stimulating, story driven and values based kids content.
• 34:18
  That's why I'm very excited about Brave Plus.
• 34:21
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• 34:24
  reinforces our values instead of undermining them.
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• 34:30
  screen out messages that are harmful, but to also avoid over
• 34:34
  stimulating video content that's linked to mental and behavior
• 34:37
  issues. Brave Plus only accepts one in
• 34:40
  every 20 shows that they review. When you check it out, you'll
• 34:43
  find classics like Strawberry Shortcake, Babar, Paddington, as
• 34:47
  well as new shows like Season 2 of Iggy and Mr. Kirk starring
• 34:51
  Kirk Cameron. And right now, just for my
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• 34:56
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• 35:37
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  everylife.com/lila. You mentioned you had three
• 35:45
  suicide attempts by the age of 18.
• 35:49
  Can you share more about those? Yeah, I don't know how detailed
• 35:53
  I want to get, but I will tell a story of when I was 17,
• 35:58
  rededicated my life to the Lord. Was living stealth at the time.
• 36:02
  In the trans community, we call that like living stealth is when
• 36:06
  no one knows that you're trans, they just think that you're
• 36:08
  biologically that gender. So as far as the we're.
• 36:13
  Passing that. Well, yeah, but you.
• 36:15
  Just was. Was this before the mastectomy?
• 36:17
  Yes. And this was before the
• 36:19
  testosterone injections as well. So I was already passing, I was
• 36:23
  already using the men's restroom, I was using the men's
• 36:26
  locker room, all of that. And so I found AI, found a
• 36:30
  church and we could get into the salvation story later.
• 36:34
  But as I attended this church, the Lord really was driving me
• 36:37
  to community and getting more involved and getting more into
• 36:40
  the word. And it's not like I was there to
• 36:43
  pollute the church and like try and tell them it's a
• 36:45
  mistranslation in Scripture. Although I was believing that
• 36:48
  lie. I'm more so just was so hungry
• 36:51
  for community and so hungry for Jesus that I wanted to be
• 36:55
  involved as much as I could. And so at the time, I was very
• 36:59
  popular on Instagram for being a part of the trans community and
• 37:04
  being an advocate of the trans community.
• 37:07
  And I continue to attend this like young adults, you know,
• 37:11
  young, young people service on Wednesday nights.
• 37:14
  And one night I go and, and the pastor kind of pulls me aside
• 37:18
  and I'm friends with everyone on the worship team.
• 37:20
  No one, no one knows anything. There's maybe about 50 kids that
• 37:22
  are going to this church. Service, they haven't seen your
• 37:24
  Instagram. Yeah, they have, as far as I
• 37:26
  know. No, you know, everyone just sees
• 37:29
  me as Austin, knows me as Austin and the pastor's like, hey, I, I
• 37:33
  heard that you wanted to get more involved.
• 37:35
  You can you tell me a little bit about your testimony, which is
• 37:37
  something totally normal to ask. And so I share with him some of
• 37:41
  my testimony, but I don't feel safe enough or desiring to share
• 37:45
  such hardship of what I've faced being trans.
• 37:49
  Because this is the first church experience that I'm having where
• 37:52
  I'm not being rejected, where I'm not being shunned or I'm
• 37:55
  actually being like allowed to attend or allowed to be
• 37:59
  involved. And I don't share that with him.
• 38:02
  And he said after I shared some pretty vulnerable things, he
• 38:06
  just said, I just think that it's funny that you haven't
• 38:08
  mentioned or shared the fact that you're actually a
• 38:10
  biological female who's been identifying as Austin and that
• 38:15
  you're an abomination and that you're going to go to hell.
• 38:18
  That was my reaction. I immediately kind of SAT sat
• 38:22
  back. And I look over at the executive
• 38:24
  pastor sitting next to him, and he's kind of chuckling.
• 38:27
  And I'm so embarrassed. And I look over because right
• 38:31
  right after this time, you know that you get to hang out and
• 38:33
  have pizza with everyone. You go in and then everyone's
• 38:36
  watching. All of my friends are watching.
• 38:39
  They they had no idea that I was born biologically.
• 38:42
  They were watching him talk to. Me.
• 38:44
  They were watching him talk to me.
• 38:45
  Yeah. Because now we're we're beyond
• 38:46
  the time of like, going inside. And they're like, well, where's
• 38:49
  the pastor? He's supposed to be speaking to
• 38:50
  us right now. And they see this.
• 38:52
  So I'm so publicly humiliated and embarrassed at this moment
• 38:57
  that's happening. Just to clarify, was he?
• 39:00
  So he knew all along. Well, no, I think he found out
• 39:03
  then from social. I don't even know how he knew.
• 39:05
  At some point, but he knew before that conversation, so he
• 39:07
  was kind of inviting you to confess to him as he saw it, you
• 39:11
  didn't. So did you see him getting like
• 39:13
  agitated? Was he?
• 39:14
  What did he say that? And I mean by like, you're an
• 39:15
  abomination. How did?
• 39:16
  He just, it was like a mic drop moment.
• 39:18
  Like it was completely unexpected.
• 39:21
  Did I feel like it came from a hateful animosity type of place?
• 39:25
  Yes, 100%. Because anyone that says, well,
• 39:28
  I just think that it's funny. Anything that comes out out of
• 39:31
  their mouth after that it's not funny.
• 39:33
  It's very sarcastic. And and he could have said like,
• 39:37
  hey, I noticed that you didn't mention this and I want to bring
• 39:41
  this to your attention that I found this out about you.
• 39:43
  Let's talk a little bit more about that.
• 39:45
  See, and I think that what you just described, if there's such
• 39:49
  a thing as transphobia, that's what that looks like.
• 39:51
  Yes, and and here's The thing is, people start to think that
• 39:55
  all churches are like that, but that's not Jesus.
• 39:58
  See, See the church can fail you, humans can fail you.
• 40:02
  The Lord, the Lord was with me in every step of my journey.
• 40:05
  The times that I denied him, the times that I attempted suicide,
• 40:08
  the Lord was there when I was sexually abused, like the Lord
• 40:11
  was there through it all. And sometimes in life, you know,
• 40:15
  we see these Christians with these titles like pastor,
• 40:18
  evangelist, etcetera, that misrepresent the Father and we
• 40:21
  start to think that that's Jesus.
• 40:24
  And that's not Jesus. And that that is why our
• 40:26
  ministry is so big on emphasizing representing Jesus.
• 40:29
  Well, you, me, the person that served in sandwiches at Subway,
• 40:33
  like we have to represent the Father well.
• 40:36
  Because it was God's love that brought me to repentance, not
• 40:39
  judgement, not hate, not condemnation was falling in love
• 40:43
  with Jesus. And the more that I walked with
• 40:45
  him, the more that I fell in love with him and his word.
• 40:48
  That's when it started painting me that I was sitting against
• 40:51
  Him. It wasn't some guy holding up
• 40:53
  some sign saying that I was going to hell that brought me to
• 40:55
  Christ. It wasn't hate or rejection for
• 40:57
  my family. It was people that emphasized
• 41:00
  the love of the Father and represented Him well that
• 41:03
  brought me to repentance. Will still holding the line on
• 41:06
  the truth, Yes. And I think that's the part that
• 41:09
  is very, I think a contradiction to people that you can both hold
• 41:13
  the line on the truth. You know, men cannot be women.
• 41:16
  Women cannot be men, only two sexes.
• 41:19
  God created you this way and God loves you as you are.
• 41:24
  But then if you're struggling with same sex attraction or
• 41:27
  you're struggling with gender dysphoria and you're saying
• 41:29
  you're gay or saying you're trans, he still loves you
• 41:32
  unconditionally. But to have special contempt for
• 41:36
  your struggle, I think that's the part that turns into that
• 41:39
  word transphobia, which it can be a real problem in the church
• 41:42
  and among others, where if you have special contempt and hatred
• 41:47
  for a temptation that someone struggled with, and instead of
• 41:50
  yes, you hate, you can hate the sin, We should all hate the sin,
• 41:53
  But you hate the experience that the person's going through to
• 41:55
  the point where you're identifying them as their
• 41:57
  experience, as their sin. And then you're an abomination.
• 42:00
  Like you're out. Where's, where's the opportunity
• 42:04
  for that person to heal? Reconcile.
• 42:07
  When that? Way has been just shut.
• 42:09
  Yeah, I, I completely agree with what you said because when that
• 42:12
  happened, I was so on fire for the Lord, like I was in my word.
• 42:17
  I was coming in Monday night worship, you know, Wednesday
• 42:19
  night youth, like I was so on fire for the Lord and this
• 42:23
  community that I was running to the Christian community should
• 42:27
  have been in loving community. I'm not saying that that they
• 42:29
  should have affirmed me. Again, I was living a stealth.
• 42:32
  So it's not like I was there to receive affirmation.
• 42:35
  I was there because I desired Jesus and to learn more about
• 42:38
  the word of God. It was the fact that when he had
• 42:42
  that moment that caught me off guard.
• 42:43
  He could have handled it completely different, but
• 42:46
  because he handled it with such hatred, I then ran to a loving
• 42:49
  community, which was the LGBTQ community.
• 42:52
  And then I struggled with prostitution, a cocaine
• 42:55
  addiction. I just went down this horrible
• 42:56
  path because of church her. And regardless of what sin you
• 43:02
  struggle with, there's a lot of people that can relate to church
• 43:05
  hurt. And that's why I'm emphasizing
• 43:07
  like, man can fail you, but God will never fail you.
• 43:10
  And at that moment of him rejecting me and saying things
• 43:14
  like abomination, you're not welcome here, in fact.
• 43:17
  He said you're not welcome here. Yes, a quote that he.
• 43:19
  Says it wasn't like, oh, we want you to ultimately be true to
• 43:24
  your biological identity. We want to work with.
• 43:27
  You, it's just you're out. He said you are no longer
• 43:30
  welcome here. You're allowed to come on
• 43:31
  Sundays because non believers are allowed to come on Sundays.
• 43:34
  That is his exact quote. And I remember thinking,
• 43:37
  wouldn't you want me here? Like, wouldn't you want me
• 43:40
  saturated and study? What was it?
• 43:42
  This was the young adult group, the one saying that young adult.
• 43:44
  Group was he afraid of you infecting other like what I.
• 43:47
  Think so, But he didn't. Share like it wasn't a
• 43:50
  conversation. That sounds like it wasn't Like,
• 43:52
  why haven't you shared this with me?
• 43:53
  We're worried about this. It was just judgement done.
• 43:56
  You're out. Yes, and I had a great
• 43:59
  relationship with the lead pastors of the church and his
• 44:02
  wife. And so I feel like the devil
• 44:05
  uses kind of as a foothold. And I thought, Oh my gosh, this
• 44:07
  is coming from them. Like, you know, maybe they found
• 44:10
  out, maybe they told him and I was just it just let me down
• 44:13
  this whole rabbit hole. But once he said that you're not
• 44:15
  welcome here. You're only allowed to come on
• 44:18
  Sundays when non believers are allowed to come.
• 44:20
  There was just so much, it was like this fire that I had for
• 44:23
  the Lord, he stomped on and just, it just burned out.
• 44:28
  And I looked over at everyone. And so basically how how the
• 44:31
  youth group would work was we would hang out, have pizza, then
• 44:33
  we would worship and then we'd break up after the sermon into
• 44:37
  male and female small groups. And so he was saying, he's like,
• 44:40
  yeah, I mean, today I'll let you stay.
• 44:42
  But the minute that we break up into male into female small
• 44:45
  groups, there's no place for you and you're just going to make
• 44:47
  everyone feel uncomfortable, so you need to leave.
• 44:50
  And I just kind of sat there frozen, just like I didn't know
• 44:54
  what to say. My heart was broken.
• 44:56
  I felt like I was spiritually naked.
• 44:59
  And in my nakedness, I'm, I don't know what to do.
• 45:02
  I don't know what to say. And I'm sitting there and he
• 45:04
  says, by the way, I already told everyone.
• 45:07
  And that was even more painful to share something that I felt
• 45:11
  like was something for me to share with someone, not for
• 45:15
  someone else to just go and tell the world, especially at the
• 45:18
  time where you're believing that you know, that trans people are
• 45:22
  unsafe going into the bathroom and you know, all, all, all the
• 45:26
  things. And so he says this and he's
• 45:29
  like, I already told everyone on the worship team.
• 45:30
  I I told everyone that attends the group so that they're aware
• 45:34
  that if you try and attend when I'm not here and there's a guest
• 45:37
  pastor or another pastor, that they're not going to let you
• 45:40
  come either. Do you think that I'm trying to
• 45:43
  imagine his headspace obviously, like it's funny that you're an
• 45:46
  abomination. Like those are very clear,
• 45:48
  horrible things to say and and a way to posture that.
• 45:51
  But I'm imagining like he's thinking other parents are
• 45:53
  sending their kids. The girls are thinking these are
• 45:56
  girls that got And so the parent so a parent he might be in the
• 46:00
  back of said there was fear a parent's going to get mad at me
• 46:02
  because they're going to find out that this publicly out on
• 46:05
  Instagram spreading the transgender ideology like
• 46:09
  lifestyle is sort of secret undercover at my youth group
• 46:13
  hanging out with these other kids.
• 46:15
  I think, oh, it's just a kid from the youth group.
• 46:17
  And then I mean, I'm trying to imagine.
• 46:19
  Like a logical standpoint. Yeah, what his mindset was,
• 46:22
  because it's in the mindset that's out there because we have
• 46:25
  to parse this because there's the truth and then there's love
• 46:28
  and it's living the truth with love.
• 46:29
  That's the call of the Christian, right?
• 46:31
  And you didn't experience love in that moment and it it sent
• 46:34
  you on a spiral. We're going to get into the
• 46:35
  spiral. But I'm curious now, now that
• 46:38
  looking back on it, that you have a ministry now, part of
• 46:40
  that is even to help people understand how to talk to other
• 46:43
  people. What do you think he should have
• 46:46
  done as a youth minister? It's not just an adult ministry,
• 46:49
  right? These are minors in a way where
• 46:52
  he could have loved you well and loved the other kids well and
• 46:58
  protected both your heart and what you were going through
• 47:01
  while still understanding the dynamic of these other kids and
• 47:05
  their parents and all of the other, you know, protecting the
• 47:08
  rest of the youth group, everyone being protected.
• 47:11
  No one has ever asked me that question.
• 47:12
  That's such a great question because it's it's true.
• 47:15
  Like I feel like he could have handled it in such a posture of
• 47:19
  the, the reason for the conversation was because I said
• 47:22
  I wanted to get more involved. So if we're talking about
• 47:25
  leadership or serving in any capacity, I think that there's a
• 47:28
  way that he could have delivered this by saying like, hey, like
• 47:32
  I, I noticed that when I asked you this question, you didn't
• 47:35
  mention the fact that you are identifying this way.
• 47:38
  I want you to know this is what I've learned.
• 47:40
  I don't know if you know that is it.
• 47:42
  True. Confirm it maybe?
• 47:44
  Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit
• 47:45
  about that, How, you know, he could have came at me with love
• 47:49
  and compassion, but still, like you said, landed on biblical
• 47:52
  truth and loved me with truth and love.
• 47:54
  And he could, he could have said something along the lines of,
• 47:56
  well, I want you to know here at this church, you know, we
• 47:58
  believe what the Bible says about, you know, man and woman,
• 48:01
  that God doesn't make mistakes and, and what the Bible says
• 48:04
  about marriage being between a man and a woman.
• 48:07
  But I want you to know that you are loved, that we are, we love
• 48:10
  that you want to attend here. We need to find some type of
• 48:13
  middle ground to where everyone feels safe, everyone feels
• 48:17
  comfortable. He could have definitely brought
• 48:20
  up the fact that I was using the men's restroom, you know, on
• 48:24
  church property. And if you would have said,
• 48:28
  like, I'm not comfortable with you using the men's restroom
• 48:30
  because, you know, we have young teens and you are a biological
• 48:33
  female. What I would have been totally
• 48:35
  offended that he said that. Yes.
• 48:37
  But if you would have countered, offered me something like, hey,
• 48:40
  well, why don't I open up the the office and use the office
• 48:43
  bathroom to make me feel comfortable enough to still
• 48:46
  relieve myself and go to the bathroom.
• 48:48
  We could have found some type of middle ground.
• 48:50
  And I think it would have been totally be totally reasonable
• 48:53
  for him to say, like, by the way, because you're struggling
• 48:56
  with these things, we don't think it's appropriate for you
• 48:59
  to be on leadership at this time.
• 49:00
  We're not seeing that that can't happen in the future.
• 49:03
  But we want you to continue to walk with Jesus.
• 49:05
  We want we want to disciple you on this journey.
• 49:09
  But let's be more honest with what we're struggling with here.
• 49:11
  I think if you would have approached it from that place,
• 49:13
  what? I still would have felt
• 49:14
  embarrassed. Yeah.
• 49:16
  But I wouldn't have felt the hatred, the gut punch, you know,
• 49:19
  that gut punch of like, hey, I'm throwing you a left hook when
• 49:22
  you weren't expecting it. And I would have respected him
• 49:26
  for laying down, you know, biblical foundation and the
• 49:29
  truth and boundaries within the church because we have to have
• 49:32
  boundaries. I would have respected that from
• 49:35
  him also, even though he didn't understand the bathroom
• 49:39
  situation or the name situation, like have the conversation.
• 49:42
  Because like we talked about earlier, the absence of the
• 49:45
  conversation is part of the problem.
• 49:47
  We have to have the conversation because if we don't then people
• 49:51
  are going to start trying to find permission, you know,
• 49:54
  within. I think that's such a a powerful
• 49:58
  point. The absence of the conversation
• 49:59
  is part of the problem. And we, that's my husband's
• 50:02
  wisdom, by the way, that's. Such a good line.
• 50:03
  I know we got to get him on. We're going to have we're going
• 50:05
  to have him on the show. OK, Back to the youth pastor
• 50:08
  though, in terms of these sex based groups, the girls go over
• 50:13
  here and study, The boys go here and study after worship in the
• 50:15
  sermon. How should that have been
• 50:17
  handled? That's such a great question.
• 50:22
  I'm trying to put it in my perspective.
• 50:24
  Like, OK, if I was in youth ministry, I would probably say
• 50:27
  like, they're probably not going to be the only one.
• 50:32
  Hopefully, you know, because that's in attendance that's
• 50:35
  struggling with this. Because I would hope that
• 50:37
  there'd be young people that are struggling that feel safe enough
• 50:39
  to still attend church, right? And maybe make their own
• 50:42
  separate group to where, you know, these are people that are
• 50:45
  struggling just to make them feel comfortable enough.
• 50:47
  Because at the end of the day, I don't care what you want to be
• 50:49
  called, I want you in the church Pew.
• 50:51
  I want you with an open Bible. Yes, come as you are.
• 50:54
  But the Lord loves us enough to not say I want you to stay as
• 50:57
  you are. It says in it says in the word
• 50:59
  that we are a new creation in Christ Jesus.
• 51:01
  So I, I think I would try and find some type of way to be
• 51:04
  like, Hey, I don't feel comfortable with you, you know,
• 51:07
  being with the guys because they're probably going to talk
• 51:10
  about some things that they're struggling with.
• 51:12
  And we want to make sure that they have a safe enough space.
• 51:14
  So if he were to emphasize, like, we want to make sure that
• 51:17
  we're protecting, you know, their confidence, credentiality,
• 51:20
  their space to let boys talk about boy things and let girls
• 51:24
  talk about girl things. Let's try and find some middle
• 51:27
  ground. I think even if he said like,
• 51:29
  hey, well, such and such said that they'll be in a group with
• 51:31
  you, but still let me be in a group, still let me open up my
• 51:35
  Bible. Like I think if he would have
• 51:37
  pushed me and said, you have to be with the girls, I probably
• 51:39
  wouldn't have felt safe enough or comfortable enough to attend.
• 51:42
  And I know that there's already going to be people commenting
• 51:44
  saying, well, we shouldn't have to do this or we shouldn't have
• 51:47
  to create these extra spaces for people.
• 51:49
  But here's the thing, Let's look at the heart.
• 51:51
  I was hungry for Jesus. And the minute that I faced
• 51:55
  rejection, the minute that I faced people just denying, like
• 52:00
  basically with their actions saying that Jesus didn't love
• 52:03
  me, I ran to the world and, and I became addicted to cocaine and
• 52:07
  pornography addiction and prostituting myself.
• 52:10
  And it just, it was just horrible.
• 52:13
  And I think even if we don't understand what someone is
• 52:15
  struggling with, we have to look at them and see ourselves and
• 52:18
  what we've struggled with that maybe some people don't get and
• 52:21
  just see that Jesus pursued us even in that and we should still
• 52:24
  pursue them and give it a shot. Have the conversation in a
• 52:28
  loving way and say, like, how can we find some middle ground?
• 52:32
  We want to love you back to Jesus.
• 52:34
  We want to walk with you on this journey.
• 52:36
  We want you to know you are welcome here.
• 52:38
  You are loved. This is what the word says.
• 52:41
  And we're not backing down on what the truth says because the
• 52:43
  truth says it'll, it's going to set you free.
• 52:46
  But we want you to know that you're loved and you're welcome
• 52:48
  here. Let's you know, let's let's
• 52:50
  figure it out together. I want to go back to your story
• 52:53
  and then I think we will try to return to this question of the
• 52:55
  church because I know that's a huge part of your story and your
• 52:59
  ministry and I think it's such an important one to tackle.
• 53:02
  How does the church respond and help people who are identifying
• 53:05
  as LGBTQ and everything else? So, but you were talking about
• 53:10
  this rejection, you go home after that Sunday.
• 53:14
  Yes, so when I was that. The first suicide attempt.
• 53:17
  That's my third at that point. And when this happened and I
• 53:22
  looked over and everyone was looking at me.
• 53:25
  Oh my gosh. I felt like I was, I undressed
• 53:27
  myself in front of, you know, like that's really what it felt
• 53:29
  like. I was so embarrassed.
• 53:30
  I ran away like a little girl to my car.
• 53:33
  Especially after that was after he said, you know, you could
• 53:36
  come on Sundays because even non believers are allowed to come on
• 53:38
  Sundays. And I told everyone I felt so
• 53:42
  embarrassed and I ran in my car. I got in the car, turn on the
• 53:46
  car skirting out of the church parking lot and I'm hitting the
• 53:49
  steering wheel and I'm just like crying.
• 53:52
  I just feel so I don't even know what word I'm I'm looking for,
• 53:57
  but I just felt so destroyed internally.
• 53:59
  Like I felt like all the lies that finally twinkled away and
• 54:03
  like Jesus doesn't love me. And you know, like, you know,
• 54:06
  like these lies that I've been told from the enemy and from my
• 54:09
  mom when she was drunk, that like no one's ever going to love
• 54:11
  me, that God doesn't love me. I was told things when my mom
• 54:14
  was drunk, like you're an abomination.
• 54:15
  Just kill yourself already because you're going to burn in
• 54:17
  hell. Your mother would say that.
• 54:18
  My mother would say those things drunk to me and I would I would
• 54:21
  hear things from the. Because you were identifying as
• 54:24
  trans. Yes, and, and I would hear
• 54:27
  things like you're an abomination and stuff from the
• 54:29
  church and you're not welcome here in these things.
• 54:32
  It's like those lies of the enemy finally were silenced
• 54:36
  because I was so saturated in the word of God.
• 54:39
  Being able to be involved in church and attending more
• 54:42
  frequently and opening up my Bible more and being more
• 54:45
  accepting of the word of God, you know, transforming my heart
• 54:48
  that once this church hurt happened.
• 54:51
  It was like all those lies flooded back in and I just kept
• 54:55
  saying why, Why Lord, like I'm so on fire for you.
• 54:58
  Like why did this have to happen?
• 55:00
  Like now I'm going to have to start from Ground Zero again at
• 55:03
  like, trying to find a church and trying to learn more about
• 55:05
  you. Because even though all of this
• 55:07
  was happening, I was struggling with my gender identity, you
• 55:10
  know, struggling with my sexuality.
• 55:11
  It's hard for a lot of people to understand that I was still
• 55:14
  pursuing Jesus and still desiring this relationship with
• 55:17
  God. I was just struggling and
• 55:19
  battling with a verse in the Bible, like a lot of us struggle
• 55:23
  with, it's hard. Like if we're reading our Bible
• 55:25
  and we're not struggling with with some verse, then what Bible
• 55:28
  are you reading? You know, we're human.
• 55:30
  There's things in there that are hard to agree with, but they
• 55:32
  challenge your faith and they are the truth.
• 55:35
  And so I was just struggling so hard with that.
• 55:38
  And I said, God, why? You know, why did this happen?
• 55:41
  And I just heard the Holy Spirit tell me, forgive him.
• 55:44
  He doesn't know what he just did.
• 55:45
  He doesn't know what he just said, forgive him.
• 55:48
  And I remember thinking like saying out loud, God, why would
• 55:51
  you want me to forgive him? And I had so many moments of
• 55:53
  that in my testimony, like when the Lord told me to forgive my
• 55:55
  mom after the years of, of abuse and her being drunk.
• 55:59
  And I was like, God, why would you want me to forgive her?
• 56:01
  But I obeyed and that gave me 3 blessed years of a sober mop.
• 56:05
  You know, there's just so many moments in my testimony where
• 56:08
  the Lord said, forgive them. And so I had this radical
• 56:11
  forgiveness moment and I said, OK, Lord, I'm really upset right
• 56:14
  now. I'm going to choose to forgive
• 56:16
  him eventually. Right now my heart is really
• 56:18
  broken, but I will obey you in that.
• 56:21
  And so that led to just drinking and mixing it with pills and
• 56:25
  just this whole, you know, this whole thing.
• 56:27
  So just to clarify, you left the church, you you forgave him or
• 56:31
  you said I want to forgive? Him, I said I want to forgive
• 56:33
  him. The Lord told me I needed to
• 56:34
  forgive him and I basically said OK.
• 56:36
  A little bit later, right then you turn to.
• 56:38
  Coping mechanisms, which for you at this time were.
• 56:41
  Alcohol, pills, sex, all of it. Just feeding my flesh.
• 56:45
  Just trying to find anything. I drove, drove 120 miles an hour
• 56:49
  on the freeway that night just trying to hit a brick wall.
• 56:54
  Just very feeling like the lie coming back from the devil of
• 56:59
  like, well, you know, just kill yourself.
• 57:01
  You're going to go to hell anyway.
• 57:03
  And I would hear that so much in my head whenever church hurt
• 57:08
  would happen, whenever my mom would be drinking, you know, my
• 57:10
  mom would say things to me drunk like that.
• 57:15
  No one's ever going to love you because you're a freak.
• 57:17
  And that's when the addiction to sex and pornography and
• 57:21
  prostitution came in, because I realized that people actually
• 57:24
  fetishized the fact that I was trans.
• 57:26
  How old were you at this? Point at this point, I'm 18 and
• 57:31
  I would put myself in situations where I know the Lord had his
• 57:34
  hand on me because I have no idea how I survived some of
• 57:37
  them. And my therapist would tell me,
• 57:41
  you know, when are we going to talk about the fact that you're
• 57:42
  self harming? And I would look at her and say,
• 57:45
  what are you talking about? I haven't like cut myself since
• 57:47
  I was a teenager. And she's like, no, you're
• 57:49
  putting yourself in these promiscuous situations and
• 57:54
  you're putting yourself in a position of rape because you're
• 57:57
  going back to the inner child that never got to say yes.
• 58:03
  And that's exactly what I did. There'd be moments where I would
• 58:06
  prostitute myself and I would sleep with people back-to-back
• 58:10
  because they paid top dollar for me because that made me feel
• 58:14
  like I had value. And that was a route to me being
• 58:17
  a child, feeling like my value was only my body.
• 58:22
  And it was also going back to like the aha moment of thinking
• 58:26
  about all the times my mom said, no one's going to love you
• 58:28
  because you're a freak. And then every time it would
• 58:32
  happen, I'd be like, ha, see, you know, people are paying this
• 58:35
  much money, just have an hour with me or, or just to take me
• 58:37
  on a date. And it was just this, this like
• 58:41
  affirming thing that I was trying to do is like a coping
• 58:43
  mechanism to heal. And I'm so grateful that like my
• 58:46
  therapist called me out and that and she really like dove into
• 58:52
  the fact that I was putting myself in these unsafe
• 58:54
  situations to say yes. And she tied in to even when the
• 58:59
  trauma would happen and how we talked very in depth about the
• 59:02
  trauma as a child and how I would do the same, same thing,
• 59:05
  just lay there just empty, just not.
• 59:10
  And so these things would happen to me and I would just lay there
• 59:13
  like a little kid. And it was my way of like
• 59:18
  saying, I'm saying yes, sorry. I'm so.
• 59:26
  Sorry Lex. So the church can easily look at
• 59:35
  someone and judge them for struggling with their sexuality
• 59:44
  or their gender identity, but have no idea why.
• 59:52
  And for me, it was because of all that abuse.
• 59:55
  And the world was selling me. Like, if you get on these
• 59:58
  hormones, if you get this surgery, if you do these things,
• 1:00:01
  you'll feel empowered, you'll feel better, you'll feel
• 1:00:04
  comfortable. And it was a Band-Aid.
• 1:00:09
  It was a Band-Aid. Did your family know about the
• 1:00:14
  abuse? Not until I was.
• 1:00:16
  The mother was some of the abuse, but the sexual abuse, was
• 1:00:19
  that something that they understood at all in your teen
• 1:00:22
  years when you are becoming Austin?
• 1:00:24
  They didn't know about any of that until I became an adult.
• 1:00:28
  And the day that I told my mom, she was drunk.
• 1:00:32
  She was pouring her glass of wine in the kitchen and I just
• 1:00:38
  felt like the Lord wanted me to tell her and I felt like it was
• 1:00:41
  going to release something from being vulnerable and like
• 1:00:46
  sharing with something like that.
• 1:00:50
  And I walked in and I just, you know, it's probably not the
• 1:00:53
  right timing. She was drinking, you know, but
• 1:00:56
  I, I feel like I needed to say it.
• 1:00:58
  And I walked in and I'm like, mom, I have to tell you
• 1:01:01
  something. She's pouring her glass of wine
• 1:01:06
  and I told her what happened to me in in detail.
• 1:01:11
  As a 5 year old. Yeah, and it was by a family
• 1:01:14
  friend at a party. And I said that I was, you know,
• 1:01:19
  old enough to understand, you know, what happened and stuff.
• 1:01:22
  And she just started laughing at me like this, like, really deep
• 1:01:25
  demonic laugh. And she said that's why you're a
• 1:01:27
  freak. And she just poured her glass of
• 1:01:34
  wine and she went to the other room.
• 1:01:36
  There was still like, I'm so sorry you went through that.
• 1:01:45
  And again, I know it was just the demons talking through my
• 1:01:49
  mom drunk, you know, like I, I, I've talked to my mom about it
• 1:01:54
  sober before she passed away. And she feels terrible for some
• 1:01:59
  of the things that she, well, she felt terrible for some of
• 1:02:02
  the things that she said and did when she was drunk.
• 1:02:05
  But at the time, from the perspective of being a mom now,
• 1:02:09
  I just needed my mom to hold space and to sympathize with me
• 1:02:16
  and, and say the truth like, oh gosh, honey, I'm so sorry.
• 1:02:19
  That shouldn't have happened to you.
• 1:02:20
  That's terrible that that happened to you.
• 1:02:24
  But the fact that she just said like, that's why you are the way
• 1:02:27
  that you are and that's why you're a freak.
• 1:02:32
  Was it helpful? It was hurtful.
• 1:02:35
  It wasn't healing. It was harmful.
• 1:02:41
  Thank you so much for sharing so vulnerably and it should not
• 1:02:48
  have happened to you when you should have been protected.
• 1:02:52
  I agree. And I just have to say like,
• 1:02:55
  it's so easy to judge someone like me when I identified as
• 1:03:02
  Austin, even just looking in the comments section today I told my
• 1:03:06
  husband, I said, no wonder why you tell me to stay out of the
• 1:03:09
  comments section. You know, because some people,
• 1:03:10
  they look at my story and they still think that I'm, they think
• 1:03:14
  that I'm a biological man. So they assume that I'm a trans
• 1:03:17
  woman. 33 week president, Biological man with two other
• 1:03:20
  young children. Yeah, because they don't read a
• 1:03:23
  caption or, you know, they don't.
• 1:03:25
  They don't actually pay attention.
• 1:03:26
  They just immediately judge. And these are the same people
• 1:03:28
  that have in their bio a Bible verse.
• 1:03:32
  I'm so sorry, Lex. It's so shameful.
• 1:03:35
  It it angers it angers me, but the Lord turns that anger into
• 1:03:40
  fuel for his Kingdom and that's why our ministry is so big on
• 1:03:45
  equipping the body of Christ. How to love effectively and
• 1:03:48
  ministry effectively truth and love because they are a part of
• 1:03:51
  the problem. You're having a Bible verse in
• 1:03:53
  your bio, but you're being so hateful to me because you think
• 1:03:57
  that I'm trans and you're a part of the problem.
• 1:04:00
  It's so easy to look at someone like me and, and, and judge me
• 1:04:03
  because you've not experienced the same struggle, right?
• 1:04:08
  But when we look at other people and they're struggling with like
• 1:04:10
  alcohol or pornography or whatever, we have to look at
• 1:04:14
  them through the lens of Jesus and through the lens of like
• 1:04:20
  what we struggled with when we were once lost, but then God
• 1:04:23
  found us, you know? So there's a lot that goes
• 1:04:28
  behind a label. There's a lot that goes behind
• 1:04:30
  the whole trans ideology. There's a root cause.
• 1:04:33
  And it's most of the time sexual trauma and pain.
• 1:04:36
  I've seen that in a lot of the interviews we've had now on the
• 1:04:39
  show, where not every single person, but most, there's sexual
• 1:04:44
  trauma, There's pain behind a lot of these issues, and I
• 1:04:51
  really hope that this show can do a small part in
• 1:04:53
  destigmatizing it, talking about it.
• 1:04:57
  We have to talk about it. And I think your ministry, your
• 1:05:01
  testimony is so incredibly empowering to people because
• 1:05:06
  you're laying it out there. And I guarantee you there are
• 1:05:10
  people listening right now. There are people who will be
• 1:05:12
  listening in the future. There are people that know other
• 1:05:15
  people that have similarities. No one's story is exactly the
• 1:05:18
  same, but there will be similarities to different
• 1:05:22
  pieces. I agree.
• 1:05:25
  So thank you. And I know we're still, you
• 1:05:28
  know, we're at your teen years, late teen years now.
• 1:05:32
  I want to ask you 2 questions though, because I think even
• 1:05:34
  though it's very hard stuff, it's very powerful to shed light
• 1:05:37
  on it. The first suicide attempt.
• 1:05:40
  How old were you 8? Eight, I was in the garage with
• 1:05:45
  the car on. The garage was closed.
• 1:05:48
  I'm not sure this with anyone and I saw it in a movie.
• 1:06:02
  And I just kept rubbing the engine in the car in the garage,
• 1:06:05
  filling, you know, with gasoline fumes and stuff.
• 1:06:09
  It started falling asleep. And my mom ran in and she was
• 1:06:13
  sober at the time. And she's thinking like she was
• 1:06:15
  like, what the hell are you doing?
• 1:06:16
  You know, like you could, you could hurt yourself.
• 1:06:19
  And I knew that I just played stupid.
• 1:06:24
  And she opened the garage. And you know, at the time with
• 1:06:27
  our family, you just kind of ignore the hardship or the
• 1:06:30
  things that are happening. But yeah, it's because I saw it
• 1:06:35
  in a movie. And no conversation after that
• 1:06:38
  about it. No one noticed it.
• 1:06:41
  What was the first time someone noticed Lexus hurting?
• 1:06:45
  So many people in my family ignored it.
• 1:06:50
  I think people noticed, but in like my Mexican family, you
• 1:06:56
  don't speak I'll of the dead, you don't speak I'll of your
• 1:07:00
  family. I lost a lot of my family.
• 1:07:05
  In fact, I'm going to be brave and even say that my siblings
• 1:07:11
  won't even talk to me. Now we read in the word, you
• 1:07:18
  know, it comes at a cost to fully follow Jesus and they
• 1:07:25
  think that I'm just speaking I'll of my mom because they're
• 1:07:28
  not believers. Would I have to talk about the
• 1:07:31
  test of the testimony? And I have to give God the glory
• 1:07:36
  for the, you know, the fact that He did bring her out of
• 1:07:39
  addiction and I did get 3 sober years with her.
• 1:07:41
  But I have to talk about my testimony and the hardship that
• 1:07:44
  I was put through. So even now all of my siblings
• 1:07:51
  are adults and they don't want to have anything to do with me
• 1:07:53
  because I'm revealing family trauma.
• 1:07:56
  I'm obeying the Lord with being so vulnerable and I will bravely
• 1:08:05
  say it is so worth it for the One because I was the one
• 1:08:16
  sharing my testimony and being this honest and this vulnerable
• 1:08:20
  with what I've gone through. If that means one person doesn't
• 1:08:23
  get on that surgical table, if that means one person lays it
• 1:08:27
  all down, if that means one person says I'm going to go all
• 1:08:30
  in for Jesus and trust Him even if I don't agree, it is worth it
• 1:08:34
  all. So my family, they knew that I
• 1:08:41
  was hurting, but a lot of them ignored it.
• 1:08:47
  I would say my dad acknowledged it when I was maybe 14 or 15.
• 1:08:55
  My dad was he, and he still is amazing, but everyone else
• 1:09:03
  around me has always ignored the fact that I was hurting.
• 1:09:07
  It doesn't justify ever, especially when you're the
• 1:09:11
  parent ignoring or perpetuating the hurt.
• 1:09:16
  I have seen though that in most cases it's because when there is
• 1:09:22
  perpetuating hurt or there's ignoring hurt, it's because of
• 1:09:26
  deep, deep hurt that that parent had often as a kid that they
• 1:09:33
  never got healing for and so they're passing on the trauma.
• 1:09:36
  Oh, I completely agree. So I don't know about your mom.
• 1:09:42
  I mean, you've already expressed so much love for her in this
• 1:09:44
  conversation, despite everything you went through.
• 1:09:47
  She could have been doing her best.
• 1:09:51
  I don't know. I don't know what her story was.
• 1:09:54
  I know she's not here to share it.
• 1:09:57
  I know that she had her struggle of hardship.
• 1:10:00
  It's generational, you know, and I feel the pain of being the
• 1:10:05
  generational curse breaker of my family because it feels like
• 1:10:10
  you're breaking through glass and the shards of glass that I'm
• 1:10:14
  crawling through this window. But it's because I'm making a
• 1:10:16
  way. Not, not me.
• 1:10:18
  I don't want to glorify myself at all.
• 1:10:19
  It's the Lord. The Lord is making your way
• 1:10:22
  through me to make sure that this isn't passed down to my
• 1:10:26
  kids or the generations to come. And it's so hard to be the one
• 1:10:30
  to break the generational curse, but it's like the Lord wants us
• 1:10:35
  to walk in freedom, and we can't do that if we're quiet.
• 1:10:38
  He wants us to reveal the the hardship.
• 1:10:41
  He wants us to reveal the pain. Because he could only heal what
• 1:10:44
  we actually reveal, what we desire him to heal.
• 1:10:49
  I think, too, there's a lot of honoring, honoring your parents,
• 1:10:52
  which we're called to do as Christians too.
• 1:10:55
  And that's the instinct is different than hiding what's
• 1:10:59
  difficult or even shameful to talk about that may need to be
• 1:11:03
  talked about. I think that distinction too can
• 1:11:05
  be lost for a lot of people because you can still honor.
• 1:11:10
  Without. Being keeping the silence around
• 1:11:12
  things that if there's silence, they only help the hurt or the
• 1:11:17
  disease fester more. Yeah, and it it goes back to
• 1:11:20
  Scripture, how it says, you know, everything hidden in
• 1:11:22
  darkness will soon be seen in the light.
• 1:11:24
  And it's important that we reveal things into the light
• 1:11:28
  because the Lord already sees it.
• 1:11:30
  And if we want to stop things from continuously happening in
• 1:11:34
  our genealogy, you know, for the generations to come, then we
• 1:11:37
  cannot back down. The world is not backing down on
• 1:11:41
  the ideology of the identity or the sexuality.
• 1:11:45
  We often don't want to have the conversation out of fear or
• 1:11:49
  rejection or being labeled as a bigot, But it's like we have to
• 1:11:52
  have the conversation. We have to talk about it because
• 1:11:55
  we love people enough to talk about it.
• 1:11:58
  And that's the thing too. It's like if, if some people
• 1:12:00
  don't receive it well, like for example my siblings, they don't
• 1:12:05
  receive it well. That I'm revealing this stuff.
• 1:12:08
  I'm praying that the Lord is sending the right people to
• 1:12:11
  minister, that he's sending ministering angels to them.
• 1:12:14
  And maybe it's not going to be me that brings them to Jesus.
• 1:12:16
  That's OK. God's already in process.
• 1:12:18
  But my yes is going to be worth it for whoever else comes to
• 1:12:23
  Christ because of obedience. It's obedience is never easy,
• 1:12:27
  but it's required. How old were you with the second
• 1:12:32
  attempt to take your life with your second attempt and what
• 1:12:35
  triggered that? And this is in your teen years.
• 1:12:37
  Yeah, about 15-16 years old. I often mention the fact that,
• 1:12:42
  like I would call the cops and, you know, cop car lights and
• 1:12:45
  ambulances were my childhood. And that was really the truth.
• 1:12:48
  And this one moment my mom was drinking.
• 1:12:51
  She was very belligerent. I took the blow for a lot of my
• 1:12:55
  siblings. I was the middle child.
• 1:12:57
  I was, I didn't want anything to happen to anyone else.
• 1:13:00
  So I kind of stood on the way out of protection and my, my
• 1:13:05
  little sister, she was just, she was so little.
• 1:13:07
  I, I pulled her out of the apartment.
• 1:13:09
  I just told her to stand in the hallway because my mom was
• 1:13:11
  drunk. And my mom started pushing me
• 1:13:14
  back and forth in the kitchen. I remember she pushed me so
• 1:13:18
  hard, like I had a bruise on the back of me up against the stove.
• 1:13:22
  And then she just randomly said drunk, like, I'm just going to
• 1:13:24
  kill myself. And she ran into the her bedroom
• 1:13:28
  and she locked the door. And at the end of the day, this
• 1:13:30
  is my mom. Like, I don't care.
• 1:13:33
  She hit me, whatever. Like she's my mom.
• 1:13:35
  I love her. I don't want her to kill
• 1:13:36
  herself. And she had multiple suicide
• 1:13:39
  attempts as well, you know, and her testimony.
• 1:13:43
  And so I break down the door, I'm like hitting this door over
• 1:13:46
  and over again with my shoulder, finally break down the door.
• 1:13:49
  By that time, my mom is already, she's got the pills going like
• 1:13:53
  this in her mouth. She's on so many different
• 1:13:55
  antidepressants and all these things.
• 1:13:57
  And you mix that with alcohol and doesn't do anything good.
• 1:14:00
  And so she's doing that. I smack it out of her hand.
• 1:14:03
  I put as much as I can down the toilet.
• 1:14:05
  And now we're in a fist fight in the master bedroom and she lands
• 1:14:09
  on top of me and she starts strangling me.
• 1:14:15
  And at that moment of like being strangled by my like like not
• 1:14:19
  like we're playing like no, it was.
• 1:14:21
  I'm like Oh my gosh. Like my mom is literally like
• 1:14:24
  trying to kill me right now. I just had a moment of like,
• 1:14:29
  I've never said anything rude to my mom whenever she was abusing
• 1:14:33
  me because I always try to respect her.
• 1:14:35
  You know, I, I never really defended myself because I knew
• 1:14:38
  if I did, the cops wouldn't believe me when they showed up.
• 1:14:41
  So I would let her punch me. I would let her choke me.
• 1:14:44
  I would let her do whatever. So when the cops came, there was
• 1:14:47
  no way that she could spin anything.
• 1:14:48
  She was such an incredibly attractive woman that was so
• 1:14:52
  easily to deceive any man. She like captivated any room
• 1:14:57
  that she walked in and she used that to her ability.
• 1:15:01
  And I just remember in that moment being like, I have to
• 1:15:05
  actually defend myself. I'm going to like go unconscious
• 1:15:08
  here. And I, I kicked her off of me.
• 1:15:10
  And I after that, I ran out of the room.
• 1:15:13
  I opened the front door, I grabbed my little sister, ran
• 1:15:15
  down three flights of stairs, called 911, called my stepdad, I
• 1:15:18
  come pick us up. And that's when the other
• 1:15:22
  suicide attempt happened, very shortly after that.
• 1:15:25
  Because you just felt like I'm at my end.
• 1:15:27
  Yeah. And when the cops showed up, the
• 1:15:29
  cherry on top was my mom slept with one of the cops, so she
• 1:15:33
  never got charged with anything. So I then it created a lot of
• 1:15:38
  anger and animosity towards law enforcement because I felt like
• 1:15:42
  I couldn't trust anyone. I couldn't trust my family when
• 1:15:44
  I told them that I got sexually abused and raped at a young age.
• 1:15:48
  I I couldn't trust law enforcement to protect me from
• 1:15:51
  an alcoholic abuser. I couldn't trust anyone and
• 1:15:56
  that's why I also dated people that I couldn't trust because we
• 1:15:59
  accept the love that we think we deserve and I thought that I
• 1:16:02
  deserve abuse. When you were entering the space
• 1:16:06
  of you use the word prostituting, prostitution and
• 1:16:11
  dangerous dating. Your therapist later on helped
• 1:16:13
  you understand this pattern and break it.
• 1:16:15
  But what? What does it mean to date
• 1:16:17
  dangerously? I would say like when you're
• 1:16:22
  dating an abuser, so someone that you know is like toxic.
• 1:16:26
  I dated plenty of people that were abusing me that were
• 1:16:31
  addicted to drugs, drinking. It was dangerous to put myself
• 1:16:35
  in positions like that. It got to the point where I was
• 1:16:38
  dating someone else who was also identifying as being
• 1:16:41
  transgender. We dated for oh gosh, years to
• 1:16:45
  the point where we got we were engaged and the abuse was so bad
• 1:16:49
  that I had to leave at 3:00 in the morning when she went to
• 1:16:53
  work. I got loaded in my car up with
• 1:16:56
  everything. And then my car broke down like
• 1:16:59
  my car wouldn't start. And I'm like, God, is this a
• 1:17:01
  sign? And I'm like, no, it's not a
• 1:17:02
  sign. Like I need, I need to find a
• 1:17:04
  way to leave. So I called my dad and my dad
• 1:17:07
  knew that I had battered wife syndrome because of this
• 1:17:09
  dangerous dating. And he's like, you, you have to
• 1:17:11
  leave. Like you could come live with
• 1:17:13
  me. You have to leave.
• 1:17:15
  You know, you can come live with me and I'm like dad, like my
• 1:17:18
  car's not starting. Maybe that's a sign.
• 1:17:20
  He's like, no, you're going to use your 100 mile tow AAA and
• 1:17:23
  you're going to you're going to tow yourself up to Big Bear.
• 1:17:26
  And so I did. And I swear, like the Bible also
• 1:17:29
  says, be mindful of who you're entertaining because you can be
• 1:17:33
  entertaining angels. That tow truck driver, I swear
• 1:17:36
  he was an Angel. He showed up and I sat in the
• 1:17:38
  cab and he was so happy that I was his first call of the day,
• 1:17:42
  3:00 AM because he only had to do that one trip.
• 1:17:45
  And his boss said he did enough miles to where he can go home
• 1:17:48
  with his family. So he was happy about that.
• 1:17:51
  And we're driving up and he has no idea what I what I just left
• 1:17:53
  this dangerous dating this person that's abusing me, person
• 1:17:56
  that's using the trauma that I've revealed because I've
• 1:17:59
  trusted them against me now. And this was a man, a biological
• 1:18:05
  man or a biological woman? And you're a biological woman,
• 1:18:08
  but you're a trans man at this point.
• 1:18:11
  And so is that person identifying.
• 1:18:13
  So so so so. The woman was also identifying
• 1:18:15
  as a man. So it looked like 2 gay men, but
• 1:18:18
  it was really two women in a lesbian relationship.
• 1:18:20
  Yes. It's also confusing.
• 1:18:22
  I know. Yeah.
• 1:18:25
  And we're we're driving up the mountain.
• 1:18:26
  And the tow truck driver, he doesn't know anything that I've
• 1:18:28
  gone through, but I'm just bawling my eyes out because when
• 1:18:31
  you're in a toxic relationship and you finally have the courage
• 1:18:34
  to leave, it's not easy. Everything is telling you to go
• 1:18:36
  back to it. And I, I did that so often, But
• 1:18:39
  I knew that this time was final. And I didn't know what my life
• 1:18:42
  was going to look like. And she used to say things to me
• 1:18:45
  that are kind of crazy now that life is what it is.
• 1:18:48
  Like she would say, I know that you're going to be with the man
• 1:18:50
  one day and it's going to absolutely destroy me.
• 1:18:52
  And I'd rather I'd rather kill you than watch you be with the
• 1:18:55
  man. Like she would say those things
• 1:18:58
  to me and I would literally be like, you're crazy.
• 1:19:00
  I'm never going to be with the man.
• 1:19:01
  I don't know what you're talking about next.
• 1:19:03
  You know, I'm almost six years married to a biological man, but
• 1:19:07
  we're, we're driving up the mountain and, and he just said,
• 1:19:11
  I don't know what you're going through, but I want you to know
• 1:19:12
  that Jesus loves you and you just made the best decision of
• 1:19:16
  your life. And it doesn't feel like that,
• 1:19:18
  but it's not a coincidence that you're driving from a valley to
• 1:19:22
  a mountain top. And that's all he said.
• 1:19:26
  And I just remember being like, wow, that's everything that I
• 1:19:29
  needed to hear right now. And even in that, you know, cab
• 1:19:33
  ride up, I felt the presence of the Lord.
• 1:19:36
  So when people say like, oh, Jesus wasn't in your testimony
• 1:19:39
  until you laid it all down, No, he walked with me through all of
• 1:19:43
  the hardship, not when I got it all cleaned up.
• 1:19:46
  Like he walked with me through all of the pain.
• 1:19:48
  How old were you at this point? I was 18 or 19 years old.
• 1:19:53
  So then you are, you try the church out, you get the church
• 1:19:56
  hurt. This brings you back into this
• 1:19:58
  vicious downward cycle, right? So this is part of the downward
• 1:20:01
  cycle it sounds like. Yes.
• 1:20:03
  This, this whole thing. OK, At what point do you meet
• 1:20:06
  Nick? Nick is your husband.
• 1:20:09
  Yes, yes. So we actually so after that
• 1:20:12
  whole, you know, I leave this crazy relationship.
• 1:20:16
  So we actually met in high school, so.
• 1:20:18
  Originally. Originally, yeah, my mom kicked
• 1:20:21
  me out. I, I told you at one point in my
• 1:20:23
  testimony, you know, like I live with my dad.
• 1:20:26
  He doesn't like the fact that like I've had suicide attempts
• 1:20:29
  and he just wants to call me whatever so I can have him in my
• 1:20:32
  life as a spiritual leader, etcetera.
• 1:20:33
  So I go to high school up there and Big Bear in Big Bear.
• 1:20:38
  Yeah. Big Bear High, the only high
• 1:20:39
  school that's up there, we had a very small graduating class and
• 1:20:42
  I got severely bullied, Like physically bullied, cyber
• 1:20:46
  bullied, all of it. You were at this time living as
• 1:20:49
  Austin, dressed as a man. I was the 1st at the school that
• 1:20:53
  ever identified stealth, so the staff knew but the students
• 1:21:00
  didn't know. They thought you were a boy.
• 1:21:01
  They just thought you were a boy.
• 1:21:03
  So when your husband met you and Nick met you, did he think you
• 1:21:05
  were a boy? Yes.
• 1:21:06
  He thought that I was biologically a man and the way
• 1:21:10
  that my dad negotiated things, because it was like a
• 1:21:13
  negotiation. He didn't agree with it.
• 1:21:16
  He'll even say to this day that he like drank a whole 12 pack of
• 1:21:20
  beer before having to go do this.
• 1:21:21
  But he felt so pressured by the world to go talk to the school
• 1:21:26
  staff because he just, he didn't want me to kill myself.
• 1:21:29
  He did. He didn't want there to be any
• 1:21:30
  more suicide attempts. It traumatized him.
• 1:21:35
  And he shows up and he has this conversation with the staff and
• 1:21:38
  he's like, look, like, I'm not saying that she has to use the.
• 1:21:42
  And he said she he's like, I'm not saying that she has to use
• 1:21:45
  the men's bathroom or the men's locker room, but can, if she has
• 1:21:48
  to use the restroom, can she come to the nurse's bathroom?
• 1:21:51
  And like that way she has got some place to use the restroom,
• 1:21:54
  you know? And so that was kind of like our
• 1:21:56
  deal. And yeah, I lived as as Austin
• 1:22:01
  my junior senior year of high school with a parent actually
• 1:22:05
  knowing. And Nick had no idea so.
• 1:22:09
  And Nick, was he same sex attracted at this point?
• 1:22:13
  Identifying as gay? Where was he at?
• 1:22:15
  So Big Bear is very behind on things.
• 1:22:18
  They're very old school. So it wasn't like an in thing to
• 1:22:21
  be LGBT like it is now. Now it's like if you're a
• 1:22:24
  Christian and you're conservative, you're like the
• 1:22:26
  minority versus the majority and you're also bullied for not
• 1:22:31
  being LGBT nowadays, so. It's cool to be bi.
• 1:22:35
  Yeah, yeah. So he was struggling with same
• 1:22:40
  sex attraction, acting upon it privately, but he wasn't getting
• 1:22:45
  bullied like I was. And I knew that he was
• 1:22:47
  struggling in that arena. I didn't know that he was going
• 1:22:50
  to be my husband one day. And so I would tell people, why
• 1:22:52
  am I the one getting bullied here?
• 1:22:54
  Like people would call me it. I don't know what it is.
• 1:22:57
  And you know, there, there are people that were curious to
• 1:23:00
  think, you know, like, is this person trans?
• 1:23:02
  Is this purse? I don't know what it is.
• 1:23:04
  They would call me it all the time and then I would start
• 1:23:07
  dating all the football players girlfriends and then I'd get
• 1:23:09
  beat up for dating their girlfriends.
• 1:23:11
  And it was just this whole bad thing.
• 1:23:14
  And so I, it got to a point where I, this is so crazy.
• 1:23:19
  We found this out a year into the marriage is they pulled Nick
• 1:23:24
  out of class, the security and they're like, Hey, we heard that
• 1:23:27
  you got beat up, can you just lift up your shirt so we could
• 1:23:31
  have the proof? Nick got beat.
• 1:23:32
  Up, yeah. For for being the gay kid.
• 1:23:35
  But I was the gay kid that got beat up that day and got sent
• 1:23:37
  home. But the security came up to Nick
• 1:23:40
  and pulled him out of class. And we found this out like a
• 1:23:42
  year into our marriage. And he's like, I don't know what
• 1:23:45
  you're talking about. I didn't, I didn't get beat up.
• 1:23:47
  And the security guard said, can I please just can you just lift
• 1:23:50
  up your shirt just a little bit, like just want to make sure
• 1:23:52
  you're OK, It's OK. You're safe.
• 1:23:54
  And Nick lifts up his shirt and there's obviously nothing.
• 1:23:57
  But meanwhile, I'm at home. I have welts all over me.
• 1:24:01
  I have because I was quartered by the wrestling team of the
• 1:24:04
  football team and they hacky sacked me to the point where it
• 1:24:08
  looked like I went paintballing. And now that I'm thinking about
• 1:24:12
  it, there was another attempt at suicide.
• 1:24:15
  It wasn't three, it must have been 4 because that's another,
• 1:24:18
  that's another thing that led to that.
• 1:24:20
  And so my dad and he got called from school and he picked me up,
• 1:24:25
  took me home. And this is what I call the
• 1:24:28
  French toast story because I felt like I needed help at this
• 1:24:32
  point. I was cutting myself, mutilating
• 1:24:34
  my chest so much. I had so many scars on my legs
• 1:24:36
  from just bloodletting and just like self harming and stuff, not
• 1:24:40
  for attention. No one knew that I was doing
• 1:24:42
  that. I just felt so numb that I
• 1:24:43
  wanted to feel alive. I wanted to feel like I was.
• 1:24:46
  My heart was still beating and it was like when I saw the
• 1:24:48
  blood, it's like, OK, I'm still alive.
• 1:24:51
  Even though I would cut myself, I wouldn't feel anything.
• 1:24:53
  I would still feel numb, but it was a reminder that I was alive.
• 1:24:57
  And after I got super severely bullied and stuff, my dad just
• 1:25:00
  kind of let me do my thing when I was at the house.
• 1:25:02
  And I just felt the Lord tell me, you need help, You need to
• 1:25:05
  tell him. And I was wondering, tell your
• 1:25:08
  dad, tell my dad that I was, he knew I was getting bullied, but
• 1:25:12
  that I was like attempting suicide and, and you know, like
• 1:25:15
  had more self harm issues. So he walks by the bathroom and
• 1:25:20
  I'm wearing these long basketball shorts and I said,
• 1:25:22
  Dad, I have something to tell you.
• 1:25:24
  I have something to show you. And I kind of lift up, you know,
• 1:25:27
  I've kind of pull up my basketball shorts.
• 1:25:28
  So you just see all the dry blood and just everything in my
• 1:25:31
  dad just looks down at it and he looks at me and he just says
• 1:25:34
  why? And I said I can't get her voice
• 1:25:37
  out of my head. And I was talking about my mom,
• 1:25:40
  all the things, drunken things my mom would say to me.
• 1:25:43
  I just can't get her voice out of my head.
• 1:25:44
  And then these kids at school are bullying me.
• 1:25:46
  And and then my dad walks away immediately and I'm thinking
• 1:25:49
  he's on the phone with 911. He's going to put me in a psych
• 1:25:52
  ward. This is going to be worth, you
• 1:25:54
  know, I'm, I walk out to the kitchen and my dad is cooking me
• 1:25:59
  French toast. And I'm like, dad, what are you
• 1:26:03
  doing? And he's like, I'm cooking
• 1:26:04
  French toast because I know that it's your favorite.
• 1:26:08
  And my dad may not have had the words to say, but he knew
• 1:26:12
  something that I liked. He knew something that would
• 1:26:16
  bring me comfort, you know, and it ministered to me so much.
• 1:26:22
  And my dad comforted me through that hardship and through that
• 1:26:25
  process as identifying as that. So it's crazy to say that now
• 1:26:31
  Nick and I are married. And when you share, you know,
• 1:26:34
  some stories, there's so many synchronicities.
• 1:26:38
  But as Nick and I went into high school together, he's an
• 1:26:40
  incredible musician. I used to, I used to play the
• 1:26:42
  guitar and think that I can sing.
• 1:26:44
  I Can't Sing. I'm a speaker, I'm not a singer,
• 1:26:48
  but I sang at the talent show and Nick actually performed
• 1:26:50
  right after me and he played the piano and he's got an amazing
• 1:26:54
  voice. And I was never really attracted
• 1:26:57
  to men or anything, but I was kind of thought Nick was kind of
• 1:27:00
  cute. And I'm like, maybe this is my
• 1:27:02
  one chance to say something to him.
• 1:27:05
  Wow, this was in high school and before you met him.
• 1:27:07
  Junior year of high school. And he performs and he walks
• 1:27:12
  into the hallway and he's all happy, you know, because he did
• 1:27:15
  such a great job. Everyone's cheering him on.
• 1:27:18
  And I told him I'm like, hey, man, he did a really good job.
• 1:27:21
  And he's like, oh, thanks. And he did a little hop and a
• 1:27:23
  skip. And that was literally our only
• 1:27:25
  conversation in high school. When did you reconnect with
• 1:27:28
  Nick? So he graduated high school, was
• 1:27:32
  super into the new age, You're going to have to have him on the
• 1:27:34
  show. So much to say, but he was in
• 1:27:37
  the new age living in Kauai. He had this crazy moment where
• 1:27:40
  he was on an ayahuasca trip and the Lord called him back home
• 1:27:43
  and just said are you going to come back home to me?
• 1:27:46
  And he decided that he was no longer going to do the new age
• 1:27:48
  thing. He found out that it leads to
• 1:27:50
  nothing, you know, and that he wanted to follow Christ again.
• 1:27:54
  And so he decided to book a one way ticket back home, which was
• 1:27:57
  Big Bear. And you were there at this time.
• 1:27:59
  And I was there at the time. How?
• 1:28:00
  Old were you at this time? He's totally my brain so I don't
• 1:28:03
  want early. 20s I'm going to guess early 2021.
• 1:28:06
  Yeah, I'm going to say 22. Because you've been, you're 28,
• 1:28:08
  it's been married. It's about almost six years.
• 1:28:10
  And then you got married after knowing each other.
• 1:28:12
  How long? So three months we were engaged,
• 1:28:14
  6 months we got married because the Bible says if you can't
• 1:28:17
  wait, get married. And we got married.
• 1:28:19
  We got we got engaged the day of the lockdown all.
• 1:28:21
  Right, so there's this is so fascinating and there's a lot of
• 1:28:27
  10 take First of all, I we need to put on the timeline the
• 1:28:30
  mastectomy, yes, a double mastectomy and you started
• 1:28:32
  testosterone. Your dad wouldn't give you
• 1:28:34
  permission when you're in high school.
• 1:28:35
  When did you start? That was at 18.
• 1:28:37
  When did you have the double mastectomy?
• 1:28:39
  I had that the second year of our marriage.
• 1:28:42
  And your husband was Nick was identifying as gay at this point
• 1:28:47
  openly. But you guys re meet each other
• 1:28:51
  in Big Bear after he comes home from Hawaii.
• 1:28:53
  You're at this point, you haven't had an mastectomy yet,
• 1:28:56
  but you have started testosterone and you're passing
• 1:28:59
  and presenting as a man. So everything's already legally
• 1:29:02
  changed at this point. So you're Austin.
• 1:29:04
  Yeah. And at this point, I'm already,
• 1:29:06
  at this point, I think I already got out of the Army.
• 1:29:09
  So I was actually the first ever openly serving transgender
• 1:29:13
  religious affairs specialist in the entire United States Army.
• 1:29:15
  When had you joined the army? Right when I was 1820. 15 So a
• 1:29:18
  lot is happening. 189020 a lot is like everything's
• 1:29:21
  accelerating. Oh yeah.
• 1:29:22
  And then when you meet Nick, he and you, do you just hit it off
• 1:29:27
  and and does he consider you a man or a woman?
• 1:29:30
  So when we met in a coffee shop and I was there at the time, I'm
• 1:29:35
  living stealth in Big Bear. So again, no one knows that I'm
• 1:29:39
  a biological female. Now that I'm on testosterone
• 1:29:42
  things are my jaws chiseled. We'll have to show some old
• 1:29:45
  pictures. I was a pretty decent looking
• 1:29:47
  dude. I think I'm a better looking
• 1:29:49
  woman, but I very very much passing and presenting as.
• 1:29:53
  Let's pull up those pictures now, just for context.
• 1:29:56
  So now we're looking at a picture from around the time
• 1:29:58
  when you were meeting Nick for the first time.
• 1:30:01
  Correct. Yes.
• 1:30:02
  Excuse me, that's not true because you had already met.
• 1:30:04
  Him. This is this is content from
• 1:30:06
  around the time when you first start dating Nick and Big Bear.
• 1:30:08
  Yes. I mean, did he know that you
• 1:30:10
  were a biological woman? No, he didn't.
• 1:30:12
  So at first we're in this coffee shop, Moonridge Coffee to be
• 1:30:16
  specific. We one day wish we could own the
• 1:30:18
  coffee shop because we fell in love in it.
• 1:30:20
  And at the time I was living stealth.
• 1:30:22
  So I'm actually being discipled by a pastor of Calvary Chapel to
• 1:30:28
  become a pastor. He has no idea that I'm actually
• 1:30:30
  biologically a female. And we've actually reconnected
• 1:30:34
  now that I've detransition, etcetera.
• 1:30:37
  So he was quizzing me on the Gospel of John and he told me,
• 1:30:39
  hey, like I want you to go study this.
• 1:30:41
  So I went to the coffee shop to study scripture.
• 1:30:45
  And so I'm upstairs in the quiet studying my Bible, and I hear
• 1:30:49
  the Holy Spirit tell me to go downstairs on the biggest table
• 1:30:51
  and just lay it all out. All my study Bibles, all my
• 1:30:53
  notes, everything. So I'm thinking, OK, maybe
• 1:30:55
  someone needs prayer. Maybe there's a divine
• 1:30:57
  appointment that's about to happen.
• 1:30:59
  It wasn't what I was expecting. And so I go downstairs.
• 1:31:02
  I lay it all out and then my husband that I have no idea is
• 1:31:05
  going to be my husband walks in and starts playing the piano.
• 1:31:09
  But before this, it's so critical and important to talk
• 1:31:11
  about that a week prior, there'd be this dock that I would go and
• 1:31:14
  seek the Lord and pray and and open up that Bible that my aunt
• 1:31:17
  gave me at my dying to self party, right?
• 1:31:21
  I went to this dock and I fell in my face and something was
• 1:31:24
  different and and I felt like I was going to leave something
• 1:31:28
  there and I just said, Lord, I know you now.
• 1:31:31
  I've walked with you since I was 17.
• 1:31:33
  Now, like I know you, I know your heart.
• 1:31:36
  I'm studying the Gospel, John. I know the miracles of Jesus,
• 1:31:39
  the miracles that you've done. So if this desire that I have a
• 1:31:43
  same sex attraction is not according to your will, then
• 1:31:46
  magically change me. You have the power to change me.
• 1:31:50
  I just said God here, here it is.
• 1:31:51
  I lay it at your feet. If this is not according to what
• 1:31:55
  you want for me and you have something better for me, then
• 1:31:59
  I'm saying I want you to change it.
• 1:32:01
  Take this desire away from me. I've got to ask, it's a very
• 1:32:05
  profound prayer. That prayer was about same sex
• 1:32:07
  attraction. You're living stealth as a trans
• 1:32:10
  man, but you're really a biological woman.
• 1:32:13
  Was that even part of the conversation with God at this
• 1:32:15
  point? I wasn't ready to lay down the
• 1:32:16
  identity, I was ready to lay down the sexuality.
• 1:32:20
  So, so in your mind, as a kind of Christian, you are a
• 1:32:24
  Christian, but this newer Christian, you're figuring out
• 1:32:26
  your faith, you're trying to walk with God.
• 1:32:27
  In your mind, you knew that you were a biological woman, you
• 1:32:30
  couldn't sleep with women, but you thought I could still live
• 1:32:33
  as a trans man and be with a man potentially.
• 1:32:36
  Is that where your head was at? If I could be with another I was
• 1:32:39
  I would only date other trans men.
• 1:32:42
  So it would have been a biological woman presenting as a
• 1:32:46
  man or no, no, excuse me, a biological man like.
• 1:32:48
  Same situation as me, so biological female identifying as
• 1:32:52
  male with a biological a lesbian couple basically that are
• 1:32:57
  identifying as two men. Am I afraid it's not?
• 1:33:03
  Catching up OK, so you're trying to get deeper in your faith.
• 1:33:07
  You've been rejected by that church where they said you're an
• 1:33:09
  abomination. You bounced around, you were at
• 1:33:11
  an LGBT affirming, but now you're with Calvary Chapel.
• 1:33:14
  You're kind of figuring out your space, but and you're praying
• 1:33:18
  about same sex attraction and and knowing you know, sense is
• 1:33:20
  this is wrong. Take it from me.
• 1:33:22
  You're not so sure about your gender identity.
• 1:33:24
  In your mind, what was the acceptable kind of dating or
• 1:33:28
  romantic relationships you could be in at this time?
• 1:33:32
  That's such a great question because I don't know.
• 1:33:34
  I think deep down I knew that it was all wrong unless I was with
• 1:33:37
  a biological man. I think like if we really look
• 1:33:40
  at the root of everything, I think I knew that because I knew
• 1:33:43
  the truth that I was a biological woman.
• 1:33:48
  But yeah, and I knew that it was wrong because I kept having
• 1:33:51
  conviction about it. You know, like the Lord kept
• 1:33:54
  bringing in convictions. Not a bad thing.
• 1:33:55
  It's a good thing. Says in the word that the Lord
• 1:33:58
  corrects those of whom he loves, but for me, I had to marinate in
• 1:34:03
  that conviction and not have it be told to me by someone that
• 1:34:08
  was just hateful and holding up a sign saying that I was going
• 1:34:11
  to go to hell. I had to fall in love with Jesus
• 1:34:14
  and because I experienced so much rejection from the church,
• 1:34:17
  I alone with my Bible was pursuing Jesus.
• 1:34:21
  I was worshipping. I was in my word everyday I was
• 1:34:23
  having these intimate encounters with God, focusing on my
• 1:34:27
  relationship with him and like that.
• 1:34:29
  That's why I always just feel convicted to just say this
• 1:34:31
  anytime the Lord gives me a microphone is we can't expect
• 1:34:34
  people to die to self if they don't know that Jesus that died
• 1:34:36
  for them. And so when I walked to the
• 1:34:39
  stock, I walked to the stock to spend time with my loving Savior
• 1:34:43
  that I knew loved me and said, come as you are, but I love you
• 1:34:47
  enough to not let you stay as you are because I have something
• 1:34:49
  so much better for you, Not me walking to the end of the stock
• 1:34:53
  with a Savior that says, Hey, you have to do this and then
• 1:34:56
  I'll love you. You know, it was like I was
• 1:34:58
  running into my Father's arms saying, I know your word now.
• 1:35:02
  I've spent so much time with you.
• 1:35:03
  I've had so many intimate moments with you.
• 1:35:07
  If your scriptures are true. And I'm, I'm learning now in the
• 1:35:10
  gospel of John with all these miracles, then do a miracle in
• 1:35:13
  me. And when I rededicated my life
• 1:35:17
  at 17, the Lord said I'm going to wow you.
• 1:35:21
  And I didn't experience any wow in my life at that point.
• 1:35:23
  So as I laid this sexuality down and I said God it, this desire
• 1:35:27
  that I have is not according to your will, take it away from me.
• 1:35:30
  You have the power to do so, then do it.
• 1:35:32
  That was hard for me to lay down.
• 1:35:34
  And maybe someone that has never struggled with same sex
• 1:35:36
  attraction would understand. I would just say put whatever,
• 1:35:41
  whatever idol you have in that category because the one thing
• 1:35:44
  that we are not willing to give up for Jesus has become our
• 1:35:47
  idol. And my sexuality and my gender
• 1:35:50
  identity became an idol. I wasn't willing to give it up.
• 1:35:54
  And so I laid the sexuality down at the feet of Jesus.
• 1:35:57
  And I assumed that I would never be with anyone, that I would
• 1:36:02
  never be happy, that I would never have a family.
• 1:36:04
  I assumed that because I couldn't ever imagine being with
• 1:36:08
  a man or living the life that I'm living today.
• 1:36:13
  And I laid it down and I just said, I'm, I'm, I'm on my knees
• 1:36:17
  and I'm crying. And I look up and I say, but
• 1:36:19
  God, you promised to wow me. Where's my wow?
• 1:36:21
  And one week later is coming, my wow comes into a coffee shop and
• 1:36:27
  he's he's remember he left the island.
• 1:36:30
  He's still walking out of the new age.
• 1:36:32
  So he's still a hippie. And he goes to play the the
• 1:36:35
  piano. He ends up playing.
• 1:36:37
  He's got an incredible voice. He ends up playing this R&B song
• 1:36:40
  called Best Part, I think his name is Daniel Caesar, and one
• 1:36:45
  of the lines is. And those brown eyes are the
• 1:36:47
  ones that I desire at this point.
• 1:36:49
  I've never been attracted to a man.
• 1:36:50
  I've never had butterflies for a man nothing.
• 1:36:53
  I am so starstruck by his amazing voice and just his
• 1:36:57
  presence and I start repenting. I'm like, God, I'm so sorry.
• 1:37:01
  I'm so distracted by this cute guy.
• 1:37:03
  I have no idea why you wanted me to come down here, but I, I'm so
• 1:37:09
  sorry. You know, I'm just like
• 1:37:11
  repenting to God for being attracted to him, not realizing
• 1:37:15
  it was totally a part of God's plan.
• 1:37:17
  And so Nick actually gets up and he talks to the barista, which
• 1:37:20
  happens to be my roommate. And he's like, yeah, I wasn't
• 1:37:23
  planning on coming here. But you know, the Spirit told me
• 1:37:26
  to come here and he walked by and he said, and I'm like, did
• 1:37:30
  you just say the Spirit? Because again, he's walking out
• 1:37:32
  of the new age and he's like, yeah, the Spirit told me to come
• 1:37:34
  here and play the piano. I said, why don't you sit down
• 1:37:36
  so we could talk about the Holy Spirit.
• 1:37:39
  Talk about a pick up line so bad.
• 1:37:42
  So he sits down and we talk about the Lord and we talk
• 1:37:46
  about, you know, what God has done in my life.
• 1:37:48
  And again, I think in my mind that the trans thing's all good
• 1:37:53
  and that, you know, like I'm thinking that's a mistranslation
• 1:37:56
  scripture, whatever, you know, but we're talking about God.
• 1:37:59
  And our first kind of date there was just talking about Jesus and
• 1:38:02
  what God has done in our, in both of our life.
• 1:38:05
  And, and then he leaves and I think, Oh my gosh, I didn't even
• 1:38:08
  get his number. I didn't get his information.
• 1:38:11
  It's a small town. Hopefully we'll run into each
• 1:38:13
  other. We're and we ended up being able
• 1:38:16
  to get that through our roommate.
• 1:38:17
  And then we went on our first date.
• 1:38:19
  But when I drove back to my dad's house that night, I told
• 1:38:21
  my dad, I met a guy and I told him about Nick and told him I
• 1:38:26
  knew that he was gay and stuff. And my dad was just like, you
• 1:38:29
  need to tell him if he's asked you out on a date or you've
• 1:38:32
  asked him whatever you need to tell him because it's only fair
• 1:38:36
  and it you need to be safe. Like people need to know that
• 1:38:39
  you're a biological woman. So Nick invites me back out to
• 1:38:43
  the coffee shop a few days later for an official date.
• 1:38:47
  And I'm like, I'm going to tell him right away.
• 1:38:49
  I don't want a second to go by that he thinks that I'm a
• 1:38:52
  biological man. I'm going to be honest with him.
• 1:38:54
  And I said, Hey, I have to tell you something.
• 1:38:56
  I'm, I'm transgender. And he looked at me and he said,
• 1:39:00
  OK, anyway, so after I buy your coffee, we're going to go on a
• 1:39:03
  hike. And then we're going to go on a
• 1:39:04
  drive around the lake. And I'm like, wait, do you know
• 1:39:06
  what that word means? And he's like, yeah, but I'm not
• 1:39:08
  interested in anything other than your heart.
• 1:39:12
  Wow. And that was the first time that
• 1:39:14
  anyone has ever pursued me without objectifying me.
• 1:39:18
  It was the first time that he pursued anyone ever because he
• 1:39:21
  only had sexual encounters with with men.
• 1:39:24
  But he knew that he was attracted to me and he knew that
• 1:39:27
  he wanted to pursue me. And from that point forward,
• 1:39:32
  three months went by. I proposed the day of COVID
• 1:39:35
  lockdown. And then six months we got
• 1:39:36
  married and then two years I proposed.
• 1:39:39
  He almost fell into the lake. I proposed at the same dock that
• 1:39:42
  I laid down my sexuality at. And we went there after he
• 1:39:46
  bought my coffee when we drove around the lake and we were
• 1:39:48
  sitting there looking at the dock where I had that God
• 1:39:51
  moment, you know, a week later when?
• 1:39:52
  Did you have a ring? What?
• 1:39:54
  When I proposed? Yeah, Yeah, I did.
• 1:39:56
  Yeah. And, and on our on our first
• 1:40:00
  date, we go, we go back to the dock where I had that crazy God
• 1:40:04
  moment and we look at each other.
• 1:40:06
  You can see the lake in the background.
• 1:40:08
  And we just kept saying wow, wow.
• 1:40:10
  Because we there was so much chemistry.
• 1:40:12
  We had so much in common. Like there was just this fire
• 1:40:14
  that I've never felt with the woman that he's never felt with
• 1:40:17
  the man. This is all so new and so fresh.
• 1:40:20
  And we just kept saying wow. And then it clicked.
• 1:40:23
  And I'm like, when I laid down my sexuality here at the dock, I
• 1:40:27
  said, God, you promised to wow me.
• 1:40:28
  Where's my wow? And I said, I know that this is
• 1:40:30
  crazy. I know that this is our first
• 1:40:32
  date, but I'm pretty sure you're my wow.
• 1:40:35
  This was the first date. This is the first date.
• 1:40:38
  So, but this is not when you proposed.
• 1:40:40
  This is just the wow. So then three months later.
• 1:40:43
  Three months later. And and what was the dynamic
• 1:40:46
  like that you're proposing? Because he knows.
• 1:40:48
  You're a biological woman. But I was more the masculine one
• 1:40:51
  in the relationship. Even if you look at old
• 1:40:53
  pictures, you'll see he's more on the feminine side.
• 1:40:56
  I'm definitely more on the masculine side.
• 1:40:58
  And that was the thing that we struggled with within even us
• 1:41:01
  dating in our marriages. Nick naturally wanted to lead
• 1:41:04
  because he's called to be a leader.
• 1:41:06
  You know, I was fighting for the masculinity.
• 1:41:10
  I was fighting for the control of the leadership.
• 1:41:12
  And that that was the only time that we ever fought within our,
• 1:41:15
  the dynamic of our relationship was because I wanted to be head
• 1:41:19
  on show, you know? Was he comfortable with you of
• 1:41:23
  proposing? Yeah, he was just excited to
• 1:41:25
  marry you. Yeah, but at the same time, two
• 1:41:28
  days later, he did it himself. He's like, I feel like I.
• 1:41:31
  Want to propose to you prompted it.
• 1:41:33
  Yeah. Which is kind of typical
• 1:41:35
  actually. But I mean with my, I'm just
• 1:41:38
  thinking about with my husband and he was, you know, interest,
• 1:41:41
  very interested and I think wanted to marry me, but I was
• 1:41:43
  obviously very interested. I wanted to marry him.
• 1:41:46
  And anyways we can, I can tell that story.
• 1:41:47
  Another thing, this is not about me, but I kind of relate to you
• 1:41:51
  initiating it a little bit. And then obviously he goes for
• 1:41:53
  it. But it's just crazy the dynamic
• 1:41:56
  of the gender roles that are real connected to biology that
• 1:41:59
  we're still persisting even in the relationship you had.
• 1:42:02
  So when you, when you 2 get married, it was a very quick
• 1:42:06
  timeline that you got married on and you made a comment, you made
• 1:42:09
  three weeks. Three months.
• 1:42:11
  So we were dating for three months.
• 1:42:13
  We got engaged at three months. Six months we got married.
• 1:42:16
  We got married as soon as COVID would let us get married in
• 1:42:19
  Vegas. And the you you made a comment
• 1:42:22
  earlier that you wanted to get married quickly because you
• 1:42:24
  didn't want to burn with desire. You wanted to be together.
• 1:42:26
  Were you trying to be chased in the dating relationship?
• 1:42:29
  We we tried as much as we possibly could.
• 1:42:33
  But that was a value. To abstain.
• 1:42:35
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:42:36
  Because we're like, OK, well, we've never had this desire
• 1:42:38
  before, so maybe we should try and do it the right way.
• 1:42:42
  It was so hard with COVID, you know, with his, his family was
• 1:42:47
  like, if you're spending time with each other so much, you
• 1:42:49
  guys might as well live together.
• 1:42:51
  It was probably a bad thing to recommend, you know, So we
• 1:42:54
  crossed that boundary, but we felt guilty every single time.
• 1:42:56
  And we're like, OK, the Bible says if we can't wait, we need
• 1:42:59
  to get married. So the soonest Vegas opens up
• 1:43:01
  for us being able to get married.
• 1:43:03
  Let's go get married. And did you get married
• 1:43:05
  presenting as a same sex male couple?
• 1:43:08
  We're actually having legal issues with changing the
• 1:43:12
  marriage certificate to, say, a woman and a man because they
• 1:43:17
  make it so easy for you to legally change everything, but
• 1:43:20
  they make it so hard for you to change it back.
• 1:43:22
  That's wild. And they'll pay for you to
• 1:43:24
  change it, you know, But now we're going to have to pay out
• 1:43:27
  of pocket to change it. So once you're married to get
• 1:43:30
  married, and it's in your marriage that you get the double
• 1:43:34
  mastectomy. Yeah, two years, two years into
• 1:43:36
  the marriage, and once Nick and I got married, I still had this,
• 1:43:40
  like, burning conviction about the identity.
• 1:43:43
  It was like once we got married, I didn't have any more
• 1:43:46
  conviction about the sexuality. My mom signed the marriage
• 1:43:49
  certificate. She couldn't sign it quicker
• 1:43:51
  because she was so amazed that she was watching her daughter
• 1:43:55
  marry a man. Like she's like I'm taking.
• 1:43:58
  It yeah, she's like what? Whatever, whatever.
• 1:44:01
  In the right direction, in her mind.
• 1:44:02
  And in my family was like, whatever they want to call each
• 1:44:04
  other, this is a, this is a heterosexual couple, whether
• 1:44:07
  they, you know, whatever you know.
• 1:44:09
  And they supported us and they showed up to that.
• 1:44:12
  And I'm very grateful that they did.
• 1:44:15
  Sorry, I lost track of your question.
• 1:44:16
  No, so you so you're getting but it, but in the marriage you're
• 1:44:20
  and you're at this you're you're also seeking God together, yes.
• 1:44:23
  So what was the experience like to seek a double mastectomy when
• 1:44:27
  you're married to a man as a biological woman and you're also
• 1:44:30
  seeking God earnestly, sincerely.
• 1:44:34
  Yes, my husband cried when I when I took a flight to go get
• 1:44:41
  my top surgery and he mourned the fact that I was going to
• 1:44:44
  mutilate my body and he said that he tried to warn me.
• 1:44:47
  He tried to tell me, you know, you don't have to do this,
• 1:44:50
  etcetera. I don't remember any of that.
• 1:44:52
  I don't. My mom just died.
• 1:44:55
  I had this money to finally get the surgery that people said
• 1:44:59
  would bring me lasting freedom. And I booked it because it was
• 1:45:03
  during COVID and I booked it with the surgeon that invented
• 1:45:07
  the surgery because my family, even my mom before she passed
• 1:45:10
  away, she's like, if you're going to do this, I don't agree
• 1:45:11
  with it. But if you're going to do it,
• 1:45:13
  you're going to get it done, right.
• 1:45:14
  You don't want to botch surgery, you know, like if you're going
• 1:45:17
  to get it done, go to the person that invented the surgery.
• 1:45:19
  So I paid 10K cash to get top surgery.
• 1:45:22
  I ended up almost dying on the table.
• 1:45:25
  Nick wasn't able to come because he got Kovid.
• 1:45:28
  We feel like that was a warning from the Lord, like for me not
• 1:45:30
  to go. But I still went anyway because
• 1:45:32
  normally you have to wait four to six years to get on his,
• 1:45:36
  like, surgical table because he's the guy that invented the
• 1:45:38
  surgery. But because it was COVID, no one
• 1:45:40
  wanted to get surgeries. What do you mean he invented the
• 1:45:42
  surgery? He's, I'm just going to say his
• 1:45:45
  name. His name's Doctor Garimoni.
• 1:45:46
  He's the one in Florida that actually created the double
• 1:45:49
  mastectomy top surgery for trans men.
• 1:45:52
  To do it in a special aesthetic way to make it look.
• 1:45:54
  He's the one that invented the surgery period.
• 1:45:57
  Like he, he is the guy. So anyone in the trans community
• 1:46:01
  that is identifying as a man wants to get it done by him.
• 1:46:06
  And so you get there alone. It's during COVID and you said
• 1:46:08
  you almost died on the table. Yes.
• 1:46:10
  So this surgery normally takes about 8 to 10 hours if you're
• 1:46:13
  just a regular surgeon who knows how to do it.
• 1:46:16
  But because he invented the surgery, he'll do 6 people, 5 to
• 1:46:19
  6 surgeries in a day. And they're only about two to
• 1:46:22
  three hours each because he's he knows what he's doing with me.
• 1:46:27
  I was under the surgical table for 8 to 10 hours.
• 1:46:30
  And at that point, my family's getting worried because they're
• 1:46:33
  like, she should have been out of surgery 2 to 3 hours after
• 1:46:36
  the hospital made him leave because he's never had a death
• 1:46:40
  on his record and I was supposed to be the first death on his
• 1:46:43
  record. What happened?
• 1:46:44
  So that I asked the same thing. I woke up with machines all
• 1:46:47
  connected to me. I was coughing up blood
• 1:46:49
  perfusively. I could barely talk.
• 1:46:51
  And they told me that the surgery went great.
• 1:46:53
  It was only about two to three hours on average.
• 1:46:56
  But the minute that they excavated me, which means they
• 1:46:58
  pulled out the tube that was breathing for me during the
• 1:47:00
  surgery, they said my body no longer wanted to breathe
• 1:47:03
  anymore. And so they had to revive me and
• 1:47:06
  get my body to breathe. And they told me that they are,
• 1:47:10
  that I was never going to have any full lung function anymore.
• 1:47:14
  They told me that it would be impossible for me to fully like
• 1:47:18
  breathe on my own, that I was going to need these machines and
• 1:47:21
  all this stuff. And they had to re teach me how
• 1:47:24
  to swallow and how to breathe, breathe fully.
• 1:47:28
  So when I came out of surgery, they made me blow into this
• 1:47:31
  device where like I think you inhale or exhale and the balls
• 1:47:34
  go up. And I thought that they were
• 1:47:36
  joking because they weren't moving at all and and that the
• 1:47:41
  nurses were saying, I'm so sorry, honey, but you're, you're
• 1:47:43
  not going to be able to have full lung function because of
• 1:47:47
  what happened. Was it what?
• 1:47:48
  What did they diagnose it? Was it like a collapsed lung or
• 1:47:50
  what? What?
• 1:47:51
  What has? No idea, I have been trying for
• 1:47:53
  years to get my medical records from this facility but I don't
• 1:47:59
  know if it's because they know my name now or they know that
• 1:48:01
  I'm obviously like. How?
• 1:48:02
  How long? How long were you at the
• 1:48:04
  hospital for? That whole day.
• 1:48:08
  So I was in surgery for like 10 hours and then I was in recovery
• 1:48:12
  for probably another like 5 to 6 hours and then they let me go
• 1:48:15
  home. Even though they said you're,
• 1:48:17
  you couldn't breathe, but you were breathing on your own at
• 1:48:19
  this point. Yeah, I was breathing on my own
• 1:48:21
  at that point, but they told me that I was never going to have
• 1:48:23
  full lung function. Because you had some and SO but
• 1:48:26
  then they let you fly home so there wasn't any post op so.
• 1:48:30
  No so so with my post op. So they made the doctor Garamoni
• 1:48:33
  leave. He actually called me on his
• 1:48:36
  personal phone later and he explained that to me that the
• 1:48:40
  hospital made him leave because he's never had a death on his
• 1:48:43
  record and you felt really horrible about it.
• 1:48:46
  That they don't know if it was the anaesthesia or if it was
• 1:48:50
  just me. It honestly could have been
• 1:48:52
  because I was grieving and it was probably not a good time to
• 1:48:54
  get surgery. It could have been anything.
• 1:48:58
  But he called to check in on me to see how I was doing, to make
• 1:49:01
  sure that I was OK and told me about my post op appointment and
• 1:49:04
  stuff. And I just remember when these
• 1:49:07
  nurses were speaking over me like you're never going to have
• 1:49:09
  a lung function. You know, all this stuff, full
• 1:49:12
  lung function. I would say out loud, I rebuked
• 1:49:14
  that in Jesus name and I started repenting.
• 1:49:17
  At your double mesec. Oh you.
• 1:49:18
  You started repenting at your double mastectomy.
• 1:49:21
  Yeah, and I started crying. Of the mastectomy.
• 1:49:24
  Yeah, I started crying because I'm like, maybe God's punishing
• 1:49:26
  me, you know, I don't know if that's the truth, but I just
• 1:49:28
  felt so much conviction and I said, Lord, I'm so sorry.
• 1:49:32
  And I just started crying because I'm like, I literally
• 1:49:35
  went to the guy that invented it and I almost died on the table.
• 1:49:38
  Like they literally made him leave because they didn't want a
• 1:49:41
  death on his record. And I'm like, Lord, I repent.
• 1:49:45
  I'm so sorry. And I, it's just like I knew in
• 1:49:47
  that moment that I made a mistake.
• 1:49:49
  I knew in that moment that that I was going to regret it.
• 1:49:54
  And I've said previously in our conversation, you know, like I
• 1:49:57
  duct taped my chest. I mutilated my chest beforehand.
• 1:50:00
  I hated my body and I really did That was all very real.
• 1:50:04
  It was all very spiritual. It was all very much an attack
• 1:50:08
  from the devil, just self hatred because of the the sexual
• 1:50:12
  trauma, etcetera. And and did I experience some
• 1:50:18
  false freedom after? Yes.
• 1:50:19
  Like Nick and I, we did a delayed honeymoon because of
• 1:50:21
  COVID. We went to Cancun.
• 1:50:23
  You could see some pictures of us in Cancun.
• 1:50:26
  My. Let's look at.
• 1:50:27
  Let's pull those up. Yeah.
• 1:50:29
  So you're in Cancun with Nick. This.
• 1:50:31
  Is after the double mastectomy. So.
• 1:50:33
  You're two men and you're. But he knows you're a woman and
• 1:50:36
  you're still happy with that. But to the world, you're a gay
• 1:50:38
  couple. All right.
• 1:50:40
  At what point are you not a gay couple anymore?
• 1:50:44
  To the world, you're obviously a woman now.
• 1:50:47
  You're not passing as a You've rejected the trans identity.
• 1:50:50
  You're on your third baby. You're off of testosterone.
• 1:50:53
  Yeah, what's what's that all of that off?
• 1:50:55
  So that was two years into the marriage that, you know, I got
• 1:51:00
  top surgery, etcetera. And once that happened, like I
• 1:51:03
  said, I was repenting, you know, started apologizing to the Lord
• 1:51:07
  for making that decision. And that was also at a time that
• 1:51:10
  Nick and I found a church in Las Vegas that didn't reject us, but
• 1:51:15
  like loved us. They didn't affirm us.
• 1:51:17
  It's very important to express, but they loved us and they
• 1:51:21
  allowed us to be a part of small groups and they knew that we
• 1:51:24
  were a gay couple. They didn't know that I was
• 1:51:26
  actually biologically a woman. And I feel like that's when a
• 1:51:29
  lot of the dying to self started happening because I was able to
• 1:51:34
  reveal to them, you know, some hardship that I faced, some of
• 1:51:37
  the sexual trauma that I faced Nick as well.
• 1:51:41
  And it became like we were part of this community.
• 1:51:44
  And so we kind of started shedding the LGBTQ community and
• 1:51:48
  spent more time with believers, which I think is so vital in our
• 1:51:51
  coming to Jesus, you know, testimony.
• 1:51:54
  And at this point, I'm running a podcast, I'm running to YouTube,
• 1:52:01
  I'm running to Google to see if it is a mistranslation in
• 1:52:04
  Scripture and if the way that I'm living is OK.
• 1:52:06
  Because Nick and I would start saying, well, technically it's
• 1:52:09
  all right, right. You're a biological man.
• 1:52:11
  I'm a biological woman. So technically, in the eyes of
• 1:52:13
  God, it's OK. We would literally have those
• 1:52:16
  conversations. But then we'd feel so much
• 1:52:18
  conviction because it was about how we were presenting to the
• 1:52:20
  world. And not only that, but like,
• 1:52:24
  there were people in our life that were LGBT or struggling
• 1:52:28
  with their own sin, seeing us pursue Jesus.
• 1:52:31
  And then we were giving this false, like, representation of
• 1:52:34
  like, oh, yeah, but it's OK. It's like, OK, but we're leading
• 1:52:38
  people into sin. You know, we're hosting these
• 1:52:41
  Bible studies as this gay couple and, and it just, it wasn't
• 1:52:43
  anointed by the Lord. And so it got to a point where
• 1:52:46
  Nick's like, stop running to a podcast, stop running to stop
• 1:52:53
  running to anything else, like run to the Father.
• 1:52:56
  And even even as we identified as this gay couple, he would
• 1:53:00
  say, run your Bible, go ask God these questions that you have.
• 1:53:05
  The Lord will give you the answer.
• 1:53:06
  And he just kept pushing me to spend time with Jesus.
• 1:53:09
  And so we felt God call us to Tennessee and, and we didn't
• 1:53:11
  have a job or anything. We left our amazing church,
• 1:53:14
  everything. We prayed for the community, all
• 1:53:16
  of that, threw everything in storage, drove, drove across the
• 1:53:19
  country, found a place. Nick didn't have a job and so we
• 1:53:23
  didn't know what we were going to do.
• 1:53:25
  He gets offered this awesome job and for three months we had to
• 1:53:28
  travel so he could get the training and he would say, I
• 1:53:31
  again, I would have this like once a month conviction thing,
• 1:53:33
  which is funny because when you're on testosterone you don't
• 1:53:36
  have a period. But it was like once a month I
• 1:53:38
  was having these convictions about my identity and.
• 1:53:41
  You're on testosterone, no periods at all.
• 1:53:43
  And that's you hadn't had a period at this seven years.
• 1:53:45
  Seven years. Wow.
• 1:53:46
  Yeah, and seven years. And so I'd have this conviction
• 1:53:50
  and and we were in, I think we were in Indiana at the time.
• 1:53:52
  And Nick's like, hey, I have training today for 10 hours.
• 1:53:55
  And I was so convicted. And he's like, why don't you
• 1:54:01
  just seek the Lord? Like go seek the Lord.
• 1:54:03
  Like make that hotel room your sanctuary for God.
• 1:54:06
  Put on your worship music, open your Bible, spend time with
• 1:54:09
  Jesus, have that intimate moment with God, but take your question
• 1:54:12
  to the Lord. And so I'm like, OK, and I did
• 1:54:15
  that and I sought the Lord. And just like the worship song
• 1:54:18
  says, you know, I sought the Lord.
• 1:54:19
  He heard and he answered and I had this crazy encounter with
• 1:54:24
  the Lord and it was so real and, and, and, and people can hear my
• 1:54:29
  testimony be like, that's crazy. How could God do that?
• 1:54:31
  But I'm not here to limit God. God can do the impossible
• 1:54:34
  because I've seen it in my life and the lives of those around
• 1:54:37
  us. I had this crazy encounter with
• 1:54:39
  the Lord and he said, Austin, do you trust me with this?
• 1:54:42
  He called you Austin. Yeah, he didn't say, Lex, do you
• 1:54:44
  trust me with this? He said, Austin, do you trust me
• 1:54:46
  with this? And I'm not saying he said that
• 1:54:48
  to affirm me. I'm saying he said that in my
• 1:54:52
  the way that I felt that in my spirit was I love you as you
• 1:54:56
  are, but I love you enough to not let you stay as you are.
• 1:54:59
  Will you trust me with this? Will you trust me with this idol
• 1:55:02
  that you've created that you've chose to worship more than me,
• 1:55:05
  that you chose to trust more than me?
• 1:55:08
  And he said, Austin, do you trust me with this?
• 1:55:10
  Trust me and follow. And he said, think about the
• 1:55:12
  disciples, how they would either lay it all down and then follow,
• 1:55:15
  or they'd say, Hey, can I bury my dad or can I do this first?
• 1:55:18
  He's like, no, just trust and follow.
• 1:55:21
  And I began to just hear from the Lord and I'm weeping and I'm
• 1:55:23
  crying and the weights of letting this go.
• 1:55:26
  I thought that I was surrendering my marriage because
• 1:55:29
  to me, I was surrendering my marriage.
• 1:55:31
  My husband didn't sign up to have a wife.
• 1:55:34
  I didn't sign up to be a woman. I didn't have a choice, you
• 1:55:36
  know, but I didn't know what my life was going to look like.
• 1:55:40
  And I just knew that I was at a moment of surrender.
• 1:55:43
  And he just said, trust me and follow me.
• 1:55:45
  And he said, go out boldly and fearlessly, share your
• 1:55:49
  testimony, the goodness of who I am and bring my children back
• 1:55:52
  home. And then he said, every fear
• 1:55:54
  that you have, I'm going to bless.
• 1:55:56
  And I again, I was afraid of losing my husband.
• 1:55:58
  I was afraid of being the ugliest woman in the world
• 1:56:00
  because I was a decent looking dude.
• 1:56:02
  I was worried about everything. You know, I had so many fears.
• 1:56:05
  He said, every fear that you have, I'm going to bless.
• 1:56:08
  And I said, OK, Lord, I don't agree with you, but I'm going to
• 1:56:12
  obey you anyway because even at this point, I still believe
• 1:56:16
  like, oh, it's a mistranslation in scripture, blah, blah, blah,
• 1:56:18
  blah. But I even at that point, I'm
• 1:56:21
  like, I'm going to obey you. Even if I don't agree, I'm going
• 1:56:24
  to choose to obey you because I clearly have just had this
• 1:56:27
  encounter with you. I know you, I know that you love
• 1:56:30
  me and I know that you would call me to do something out of
• 1:56:32
  love, not out of pain or hurt, because I was walking with him
• 1:56:35
  long enough to know that. And so my, my poor husband comes
• 1:56:39
  back into the hotel room after his 10 hour shift.
• 1:56:41
  He's just trying to eat his lunch and I'm bawling and he's
• 1:56:45
  like, oh, you got your answer. And I went up to him and I said,
• 1:56:49
  remember when we got married and I told you that I would love
• 1:56:52
  you, but I'm always going to love Jesus more.
• 1:56:54
  And he's like, yeah. And I said, well, today's that
• 1:56:56
  day. And I told him everything I just
• 1:56:58
  told you about this encounter I had with God and how I was
• 1:57:01
  giving him an out in the marriage because he didn't sign
• 1:57:04
  up to have a wife. And I said, this is you're out.
• 1:57:08
  I'm going to choose Jesus. And I say that not crying now
• 1:57:12
  because I've cried most of the show already, but it was hard
• 1:57:15
  for me. I, he's the love of my life.
• 1:57:17
  But I knew that I needed to choose Jesus more.
• 1:57:20
  And it just didn't feel fair to drop this identity bomb on him
• 1:57:23
  and expect him to still be with me.
• 1:57:26
  And he said, well, he took a huge deep breath and he's like,
• 1:57:32
  OK, I need some time. And I, I'm assuming, yeah, take
• 1:57:36
  the whole day. And he's like, give me an hour.
• 1:57:38
  He, he really could have said take the whole day, but he's
• 1:57:41
  like, I, I need an hour. If you're saying now that you
• 1:57:43
  are my wife, then that means that I'm your husband.
• 1:57:47
  And as your husband, if the Lord spoke to you, then he'll speak
• 1:57:51
  to me. And he said, I need to go seek
• 1:57:53
  the Lord. And so he left.
• 1:57:55
  He went down to the gym at the hotel and he sought the Lord and
• 1:57:59
  he came back upstairs and I'm thinking we're done.
• 1:58:02
  I'm crying in the shower. I'm thinking like this whole
• 1:58:04
  marriage is over with. I don't know what my life's
• 1:58:06
  going to look like. I'm scared.
• 1:58:09
  And he walks in and he says all chipper.
• 1:58:12
  He's like, this is going to be so much easier than you think
• 1:58:14
  because the Lord is with you. And I look at him and I'm like
• 1:58:19
  what? And he's like the Lord told me
• 1:58:21
  that there's going to be a medical miracle that he's going
• 1:58:23
  to perform. We didn't know that was going to
• 1:58:26
  be 3 miracle babies later. We had no idea.
• 1:58:30
  And he just kept affirming and prophesying over me saying it's
• 1:58:32
  going to be so much easier because the Lord's walking with
• 1:58:35
  you. This isn't something that you
• 1:58:36
  are doing in your own strength. You're doing it with the Lord.
• 1:58:39
  And from that moment, we both started repenting and renouncing
• 1:58:43
  all of our previous sexual sin, just in general, right?
• 1:58:49
  The idol of our sexuality, the idol of the identity.
• 1:58:52
  And we started repenting for it. And we said, God, please renew
• 1:58:55
  our minds because if you renew our minds, then it'll be so much
• 1:58:59
  easier for us to walk away from the thinking that we have.
• 1:59:04
  And for listeners out there that don't understand the verses
• 1:59:06
  about renewing their mind, it's literally like if God can change
• 1:59:11
  the sexual desire that that we had, because we still had, you
• 1:59:14
  know, he still had same sex attraction.
• 1:59:16
  I still was desiring the identity of Austin.
• 1:59:20
  But if God can change your desire, it's so much easier to
• 1:59:24
  walk away from something. Like if he could take away an
• 1:59:26
  addiction, wouldn't it be easier to walk away from the addiction
• 1:59:29
  because he took the desire for the drug away?
• 1:59:31
  It's the same thing. And so we kept praying God renew
• 1:59:34
  our minds, take away our desires that aren't according to your
• 1:59:38
  will, so we can walk in your way.
• 1:59:40
  We just didn't realize that when we were praying that prayer.
• 1:59:43
  The diagnosed cancer I had in my womb.
• 1:59:46
  God just wouldn't renew our minds.
• 1:59:48
  He renewed my physical body. So you had been diagnosed with
• 1:59:51
  cancer at this point? We didn't, we didn't get that.
• 1:59:53
  I didn't cover that yet. I'm sorry.
• 1:59:55
  So, but but before that, he his issue was not, oh, I'm going to
• 2:00:01
  be having a wife now and I need to be a husband to a wife.
• 2:00:04
  It was more, it sounds like he was already there.
• 2:00:07
  Like I'm going to stay with you even if you're not Austin.
• 2:00:09
  I mean, was that even part of his thought process?
• 2:00:13
  I think no matter what, he was going to stay.
• 2:00:17
  And we've we've talked about that in depth.
• 2:00:19
  You know, he's like, at the end of the day, I loved you at the
• 2:00:22
  end of the day, like you identified as a man.
• 2:00:25
  You were more the masculine one. But at the end of the day, like,
• 2:00:27
  I knew that I was the man that killed me, you know, on the
• 2:00:30
  other side of things, because I totally thought you.
• 2:00:33
  Actually, you were the woman. Yeah.
• 2:00:35
  Yeah, I mean, that you. That was all you.
• 2:00:37
  You never had bottom surgery. Even if you had had bottom
• 2:00:40
  surgery, it still wouldn't have been fully biological.
• 2:00:43
  It's impossible. And that's the thing too, is
• 2:00:44
  when Nick and I met, I was already on the waiting list to
• 2:00:46
  get bottom surgery. And I met Nick and it was just
• 2:00:49
  like I felt like I didn't need to anymore.
• 2:00:53
  All that that desire to get bottom surgery went away.
• 2:00:57
  Praise the Lord for that. So tell me about the Planned
• 2:01:00
  Parenthood piece and then the cancer diagnosis.
• 2:01:03
  Yes, at this point, you and Nick are having this revelation where
• 2:01:06
  you're like, we are going to live accordance to God's law.
• 2:01:09
  My husband, wife, no more passing as the other sex.
• 2:01:12
  No more, yes, same sex desires. We're going to love each other.
• 2:01:15
  We're going to have a Christian family.
• 2:01:16
  Like this is the new path. But up until this point, like
• 2:01:19
  you just said, there had been a cancer diagnosis and then
• 2:01:21
  Planned Parenthood is in the picture.
• 2:01:22
  Yes. So right when I turned 18,
• 2:01:25
  that's how I got on. That's how I got into
• 2:01:28
  testosterone as I went to Planned Parenthood and I saw
• 2:01:32
  that same doctor for seven years.
• 2:01:33
  So that same doctor was the only doctor that I ever got a
• 2:01:36
  testosterone prescription for that.
• 2:01:38
  Anytime I got any cervical checks or anything like that,
• 2:01:41
  she was my doctor. And I remember every time I'd go
• 2:01:44
  in and I'd evangelize to her, which is kind of funny because I
• 2:01:47
  was identifying as Austin. And she'd be like, I'd never met
• 2:01:49
  anyone that's Christian and, you know, is struggling with this.
• 2:01:54
  Anyway, when we met, that is when I got my diagnosis.
• 2:01:59
  And she kept pushing. You need to get a hysterectomy.
• 2:02:03
  And the diagnosis was what? That I had cancer cells inside
• 2:02:07
  of my cervix. So that was HPV and she it
• 2:02:11
  wasn't full blown cancer yet, but it was could become
• 2:02:13
  cancerous. Or it was like Level 3?
• 2:02:15
  Level. It was level.
• 2:02:16
  Three, I needed to get it so she.
• 2:02:18
  Wanted to get it out and then you were not ready to get it
• 2:02:20
  out. So this is right when I met Nick
• 2:02:22
  and Nick's like I told her I, I told Nick I'm like she's saying
• 2:02:25
  that I need to get a hysterectomy, which anyone that
• 2:02:28
  is on testosterone read your informed consent form because
• 2:02:31
  people want to argue with me about this all the time on the
• 2:02:33
  Internet that testosterone doesn't cause cancer or estrogen
• 2:02:36
  doesn't when you take supplements that your body's not
• 2:02:39
  supposed to have. It does.
• 2:02:41
  On the informed consent form. If you look it up, it says that
• 2:02:45
  it can cause cancer. And so every person that is on
• 2:02:49
  testosterone eventually has to get a hysterectomy because
• 2:02:55
  there's so many, there's so many cancerous cells that build up in
• 2:02:58
  there because I haven't had a period in seven years.
• 2:03:01
  So now you're having an organ in your body that's dormant and
• 2:03:05
  susceptible to disease or sickness, and you have to get it
• 2:03:08
  removed from your body, otherwise it's just rotting
• 2:03:10
  inside. Of you, but you chose to not get
• 2:03:11
  it removed. Yeah, I chose to not get it
• 2:03:13
  removed, but it's not uncommon in the trans community for trans
• 2:03:17
  men to need and have to get the hysterectomy.
• 2:03:21
  But why? Why did you not want to get it
• 2:03:23
  removed? Because Nick told me, he said,
• 2:03:25
  tell her we're going to pray about it.
• 2:03:26
  This is before, this is before the detransition.
• 2:03:29
  He said, tell her we're going to pray about it for a year.
• 2:03:31
  So I convinced her to give me a prescription for a year so I
• 2:03:35
  didn't have to come and see her to get my testosterone and that
• 2:03:39
  we were going to pray about, you know, my, the cancer in my
• 2:03:43
  cervix. And at this, we didn't know
• 2:03:46
  within the year God was going to call me to detransition.
• 2:03:48
  We didn't know within the year that we were going to be
• 2:03:50
  obedient to that. We didn't know within the year
• 2:03:52
  that God was going to renew our minds.
• 2:03:54
  And so I ran out of testosterone.
• 2:03:56
  And when God told me to detransition, I've always been
• 2:03:59
  told, like you have to tell your doctor, you have to wean
• 2:04:02
  yourself off of the testosterone because it has a lot to do with
• 2:04:05
  your mental health. Like your hormone levels have a
• 2:04:07
  lot to do with your mental health.
• 2:04:08
  And so they're worried that you're going to feel suicidal or
• 2:04:10
  depressed. So I make an appointment to get
• 2:04:13
  myself off of the T in obedience to God.
• 2:04:16
  But this is after the the hysterectomy or excuse me, this
• 2:04:19
  is after the mastectomy. So.
• 2:04:22
  So was the cancer diagnosis? Was the Level 3 HPV?
• 2:04:26
  Was that after the double mastectomy?
• 2:04:30
  No, I already was diagnosed with it.
• 2:04:32
  OK, so so you it was a few years that you were sitting with that
• 2:04:35
  diagnosis and not doing taking any action.
• 2:04:38
  Were you getting regular check UPS or they were just?
• 2:04:42
  Every time she begged me, she begged me at least three times.
• 2:04:44
  And. Third time was when Nick and I
• 2:04:46
  were dating and that's when he said tell her one year.
• 2:04:50
  So basically you're, you're, you're going to plan Pyrene and
• 2:04:52
  getting testosterone. They're telling you trying to
• 2:04:54
  recommend you for a hysterectomy.
• 2:04:56
  You continue, you continuing to to continue to delay that, get
• 2:05:00
  the double mastectomy. But then you have this
• 2:05:02
  transformation with Nick. And at this point you're like,
• 2:05:05
  I've got HPV. It's turned into cervical
• 2:05:08
  cancer. That's not spreading.
• 2:05:10
  It's still Level 3. But we've got, you know, now I'm
• 2:05:13
  a wife now. What are we going to do?
• 2:05:16
  Yeah. And originally I came back to
• 2:05:18
  this appointment not even thinking about that.
• 2:05:21
  I came back to the appointment thinking I need to get off a
• 2:05:24
  testosterone in the safest way possible for my mental health
• 2:05:28
  and out of obedience to God. But when I show up to my
• 2:05:31
  appointment, they have all the surgical stuff out to do, like a
• 2:05:36
  regular pap smear to check, you know, to see how everything's
• 2:05:40
  going. And I tell the nurse I'm like,
• 2:05:43
  I'm not here for that. Like because I was really
• 2:05:46
  avoidant of like them wanting to remove my cervix regardless of
• 2:05:49
  diagnosis. I didn't want to do surgery.
• 2:05:53
  And she's like, well, the doctor will come in and the doctor's
• 2:05:55
  like, well, you're, if you're already here, I just, I need to
• 2:05:58
  look. I'm really worried that it's
• 2:06:00
  like really bad now I have to look.
• 2:06:03
  And so I told her, OK, but I told her that I had this
• 2:06:06
  encounter with God. I'm telling her in this Planned
• 2:06:08
  Parenthood that I'm going to be transition and I need to get off
• 2:06:11
  of teeth, she's telling me. And this is in Big Bear or in
• 2:06:15
  Nashville? San Bernardino.
• 2:06:17
  So I was basically getting my testosterone whenever we'd come
• 2:06:22
  out on trips here and just getting as much as I could to
• 2:06:24
  take back to Tennessee so I didn't have to do the whole
• 2:06:27
  thing. I don't even know if you can get
• 2:06:28
  it in Tennessee. But but you went back there to
• 2:06:31
  tell her that you're coming off of testosterone.
• 2:06:33
  And to find out the medical process of like getting off of
• 2:06:38
  it the right way. And so I tell her I'm getting
• 2:06:40
  off of tea and she tells me you can't cold Turkey get off of it.
• 2:06:43
  She kept emphasizing that you cannot do that.
• 2:06:46
  It's bad for your health, it's bad for your mental health,
• 2:06:48
  etcetera. She tells me that I take it with
• 2:06:51
  a grain of salt. Then she tells me like, OK,
• 2:06:54
  we're going to do the the cervical exam.
• 2:06:56
  She does the exam and as she looks in, I'm obviously
• 2:07:00
  vulnerable. My legs are in the air and she
• 2:07:03
  looks at me and she looks back in and she says, I don't know
• 2:07:05
  how this is physically possible, but there's no sign of any
• 2:07:09
  cancer in your cervix. Like your cervix literally looks
• 2:07:11
  brand new. And at that point when she said
• 2:07:14
  your cervix literally looks brand new, she has seen me for
• 2:07:17
  seven years. She's kind of hysterical at this
• 2:07:20
  point saying this doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense.
• 2:07:22
  And she now she's standing up saying this doesn't make sense,
• 2:07:24
  this doesn't make sense. And I'm bawling my eyes out
• 2:07:27
  because the Lord's giving me this revelation of all the times
• 2:07:30
  that we prayed that he would renew our minds.
• 2:07:33
  And the Lord was like, and I renewed your physical body.
• 2:07:37
  And I just looked at her and I said, he doesn't have to make
• 2:07:40
  sense. And in a Planned Parenthood, I
• 2:07:42
  was crying, giving God the glory, saying God doesn't have
• 2:07:46
  to make sense. And from that point forward, we
• 2:07:50
  got back home. We were obviously praising the
• 2:07:54
  Lord for renewing my physical body and renewing my mind and I
• 2:07:59
  sought the Lord and I was just praying about what she was
• 2:08:01
  saying. You know how I, how I can't just
• 2:08:03
  cold Turkey get off of it. My husband's in the shower.
• 2:08:07
  I'm praying just in the room with the Lord, just just weeping
• 2:08:10
  at his feet and just saying, Lord, this is what the doctor
• 2:08:12
  said. But I know that you're the great
• 2:08:13
  physician and I clearly heard the Holy Spirit say you don't
• 2:08:16
  need it anymore. And so I, I, I go into the
• 2:08:20
  bathroom to tell my husband, you know, for accountability.
• 2:08:23
  I'm like, Hey, I, I, I heard something from the Lord and he's
• 2:08:26
  like, hey, babe, I was just praying right now and the Lord
• 2:08:28
  says you don't need it anymore. And it, it completely threw me.
• 2:08:33
  I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so crazy because I was literally
• 2:08:36
  coming in here to tell you that the Lord just said I don't need
• 2:08:38
  it anymore. So despite what she said, we
• 2:08:42
  trusted the great physician, which is the Lord and I cold
• 2:08:46
  Turkey got off of tea, and three months later we conceived our
• 2:08:49
  miracle daughter Iris so. So you got you got a period back
• 2:08:53
  that quickly, Yeah. Within three months.
• 2:08:56
  It's amazing. And then right after she was
• 2:08:58
  born, I got pregnant again with Violet and now I'm pregnant with
• 2:09:01
  Nick Junior, so. Amazing.
• 2:09:05
  God made a beautiful family. What was it like to get pregnant
• 2:09:09
  for the first time? It was scary.
• 2:09:11
  I never in my life thought that I would be a wife or want to be
• 2:09:14
  a wife. I never in my life thought that
• 2:09:16
  I would be a mother or want to be a mother.
• 2:09:18
  But it felt very healing. The birth of both of babies was
• 2:09:22
  very holy. I got to have a home birth for
• 2:09:25
  both of them and the 3rd. And it was such an opportunity
• 2:09:29
  of surrender and obedience to God because child labor.
• 2:09:34
  It's, it's hard. It's hard.
• 2:09:37
  But I felt like I, I, I surrendered so much to the Lord
• 2:09:41
  and it was such a sweet gift. And Nick and I had no idea that
• 2:09:45
  in Hebrew, iris actually means God's promise.
• 2:09:48
  We had no idea that iris actually means the rainbow.
• 2:09:51
  And her whole testimony is literally taking back the true
• 2:09:54
  meaning of the rainbow. We just knew that that was a
• 2:09:57
  song that we slow dance to all the time.
• 2:09:59
  Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls. And I just love all the little
• 2:10:03
  synchronicities of the Lord sprinkled into every area of the
• 2:10:07
  hardship, the good, the bad, all of it.
• 2:10:11
  And the birth of her was very healing, I think, for me.
• 2:10:15
  It's amazing too. So you're, you're, you're on,
• 2:10:17
  you're about to have your third baby and your oldest is how old?
• 2:10:21
  Too. She just turned 2.
• 2:10:22
  So you have you're going to have three under three, yes.
• 2:10:25
  Way to go. How's parenthood?
• 2:10:28
  It's been beautiful. It's been so beautiful.
• 2:10:31
  I motherhood. I have to emphasize the fact
• 2:10:34
  that I never imagined I would love to be a wife and I never
• 2:10:38
  imagined I would love to. And there's always this
• 2:10:41
  negativity. When you say submission to a
• 2:10:43
  man, I mean Nick and I believe it.
• 2:10:45
  What the Bible says equals submission, right?
• 2:10:47
  He, I, we died a self daily. He loves me like Christ loved
• 2:10:52
  the church, which means dying to self.
• 2:10:54
  But I'll never forget it was like 3 months post de transition
• 2:11:00
  and I, I hate that word detransitioner, like I'm a new
• 2:11:03
  creation in Christ Jesus period. But I was sitting across the
• 2:11:07
  table with my husband and we were just playing a board game.
• 2:11:10
  This is 3 months after, you know, I, I laid down my identity
• 2:11:15
  and I just began to weep and cry and my husband's like, are you
• 2:11:19
  OK? What's wrong?
• 2:11:21
  And I said thank you. Thank you for making me feel
• 2:11:24
  safe enough to just be your wife.
• 2:11:27
  Thank you for making me feel like I don't have to be the man
• 2:11:30
  that wasn't there to protect me. Thank you for providing for me.
• 2:11:34
  Thank you for just being everything that I can need.
• 2:11:37
  Thank you for letting me be in my femininity.
• 2:11:42
  And it was like I had no idea that my soul ached to feel
• 2:11:47
  safety and security with a man and also enjoy his leadership
• 2:11:51
  and and desire. That it was like when I laid
• 2:11:55
  down this identity and I can walk in the fruit of God's
• 2:11:58
  original design. I was never designed to be the
• 2:12:02
  soldier, the masculine leader that I was trying so hard to
• 2:12:07
  become and be. I was wearing all these hats and
• 2:12:10
  these identities that were not in God's original design.
• 2:12:13
  And when when it fell all into alignment, there was this peace
• 2:12:18
  that this world just simply couldn't offer.
• 2:12:20
  And it was God's design. And it was like our whole
• 2:12:24
  marriage changed for the better, you know, it just all fell right
• 2:12:28
  into place. I mean, we're still married, so
• 2:12:30
  of course we're going to bicker and stuff, but you know.
• 2:12:32
  And now you have this incredible ministry.
• 2:12:34
  Yes, and we get to do it together full time.
• 2:12:37
  We travel the world, we equip the body of Christ.
• 2:12:39
  How to love the misfit community effectively?
• 2:12:43
  Because it was truth and love that brought us to repentance.
• 2:12:45
  It wasn't judgmental Christians so.
• 2:12:48
  What does that look like? What would be your advice to
• 2:12:50
  people listening who may have a family member or a loved one who
• 2:12:54
  is either struggling with the trans identity, same sex
• 2:12:58
  identity, or it could be some other queer identity.
• 2:13:01
  It could be bisexual. It could be really any any
• 2:13:04
  letter of the alphabet. Let's just say, and this is a
• 2:13:08
  person that they love very much, of course, but they don't want
• 2:13:11
  to affirm something that is false, but they still want to
• 2:13:14
  show acceptance. What would be your advice?
• 2:13:17
  It's so sad, but I often counsel and coach parents and they
• 2:13:21
  always say how do I love my child, blah blah blah blah.
• 2:13:25
  You just love your child. I think often times we're so
• 2:13:28
  worried if I love them, are they going to think that I'm
• 2:13:31
  affirming or approving? No, you just love them.
• 2:13:35
  Jesus loves them right now. And we have to understand that
• 2:13:39
  like God has entrusted you and them right with their sphere of
• 2:13:43
  influence. He's entrusted us with their
• 2:13:45
  hearts. So it's important that we
• 2:13:47
  represent him well. So whether you're a parent that
• 2:13:50
  has never said anything horrible like I've been told, you know,
• 2:13:53
  maybe you're a parent that's that's never heard that your son
• 2:13:56
  or daughter has ever been told that Jesus doesn't love them.
• 2:13:59
  We have to go into the conversation with the mindset
• 2:14:03
  that they already think that Jesus doesn't love them, that
• 2:14:05
  they've already had some church hurt or have heard from social
• 2:14:09
  media or the world that Jesus doesn't love them.
• 2:14:12
  And we as the body of Christ have to be the hands and feet of
• 2:14:15
  Jesus and love them back to Jesus.
• 2:14:18
  What does that look like? That looks like being
• 2:14:20
  hospitable. That looks like loving them
• 2:14:22
  unashamedly. I think we're worried sometimes
• 2:14:25
  as Christians. Oh well, I don't want my church
• 2:14:28
  family to know that my son or daughter is struggling with
• 2:14:30
  this. No, we need people praying.
• 2:14:32
  We need the right people praying for our kids.
• 2:14:33
  We need the right people praying for our loved ones.
• 2:14:36
  But we cannot be ashamed of our loved ones struggling because
• 2:14:39
  God's not ashamed of them either.
• 2:14:41
  And that's so important that we are hospitable and that we do
• 2:14:46
  not only invite them to church, but we are unashamedly inviting
• 2:14:49
  them out to lunch and and having.
• 2:14:51
  Those conversations, you have a loved one with a gay partner and
• 2:14:55
  how do you recommend with family?
• 2:14:57
  This is a big one. I've heard it's not just the gay
• 2:14:59
  wedding, but it's also like the family events where there's
• 2:15:02
  younger children there, there's all ages and you have this
• 2:15:05
  family member who's actively living the gay lifestyle.
• 2:15:07
  Are they, are they part of the inner fold with the partner, the
• 2:15:09
  same sex partner? What do you recommend?
• 2:15:11
  I always say #1 pray and seek the Lord because it's not a
• 2:15:14
  one-size-fits-all. I'm, I'm not Jesus.
• 2:15:17
  Thankfully, we, our ministry recommends that you always pray
• 2:15:21
  and fast and seek the Lord for your particular situation.
• 2:15:23
  Just like my father prayed and fasted for my particular
• 2:15:28
  situation with the identity, with, you know, with the name,
• 2:15:31
  with all of it, right? It's so important for us to do
• 2:15:34
  that. But at the same time, if not
• 2:15:36
  you, then who? I say that so often because,
• 2:15:38
  again, God has trusted you. If you're not going to be the
• 2:15:41
  one to open your home on Christmas for the partner and
• 2:15:46
  your gay son or daughter or whomever, where are they going
• 2:15:50
  to go? They're going to go to a loving,
• 2:15:53
  affirming LGBTQ community. We have to represent Jesus well,
• 2:15:59
  and part of that is opening up our homes to people that are
• 2:16:03
  struggling with whatever sin it may be.
• 2:16:06
  And I know that there's going to be people that are going to
• 2:16:08
  comment and disagree with this, but I know what worked for us
• 2:16:11
  and it was hospitality. It was people that were
• 2:16:13
  unashamed of us, people that were willing to sit with us and
• 2:16:16
  pray for us, not pray on us. See, when people started looking
• 2:16:20
  at us just as other people that were struggling with something,
• 2:16:23
  but they loved us, that's when our walls could break down and
• 2:16:26
  we could realize, hey, maybe not all Christians are judgmental.
• 2:16:31
  Hey, maybe this Jesus guy actually does love me, and it's
• 2:16:35
  the love of the Father that will bring people to repentance, not
• 2:16:38
  us beating people over the head with the Bible.
• 2:16:41
  And so the more opportunities that we could create to bring
• 2:16:44
  these people into our sphere of influence, the more we're going
• 2:16:48
  to be building the Kingdom of God.
• 2:16:49
  Because again, I said, and then this is so true.
• 2:16:52
  The enemy wants to divide. The enemy wants you to think,
• 2:16:55
  oh, I can't invite them over for Christmas because of this.
• 2:16:57
  This makes. Them the other Yeah, shun them
• 2:16:59
  like the. Enemy wants that and then the
• 2:17:02
  absence of the conversation or the absence of the invitation is
• 2:17:06
  what is going to cause the enemy to take that to say, see, Jesus
• 2:17:10
  doesn't love you see, they are a hypocrite Christian and it just
• 2:17:13
  it spirals from there. So we have to just love.
• 2:17:17
  It's not that hard to be hospitable and loving, but I
• 2:17:19
  think we're so worried just in our faith of doing the right
• 2:17:23
  thing. But just seek the Father in
• 2:17:25
  prayer is what I would say. Seek the Father in fasting and
• 2:17:30
  ask him what you should do about your particular situation and
• 2:17:33
  obey even if you disagree. Obey because you will see
• 2:17:36
  lasting fruit based on your obedience.
• 2:17:40
  What does your aunt think about where you are?
• 2:17:44
  Mother of three? Married woman passionately
• 2:17:48
  living the faith. She's very surprised.
• 2:17:50
  I mean, even my dad, he. And your dad?
• 2:17:53
  Yeah. What does your dad think as
• 2:17:54
  well? Before we came out here, he's
• 2:17:56
  got a beautiful, beautiful home in Tennessee with some acreage
• 2:18:00
  and, and we're sitting in the backyard and, you know, my
• 2:18:03
  husband's hanging out with him. My kids are running around and
• 2:18:06
  I'm pregnant and he just started crying.
• 2:18:08
  And, and my Mexican culture, you know, the men don't really show
• 2:18:12
  emotion. And I'm like, Dad, are you
• 2:18:14
  crying? And he's like, I never imagined
• 2:18:16
  my life to be this. I never imagined to be sitting
• 2:18:20
  next to my daughter. That's my daughter.
• 2:18:23
  I never imagined to have a son-in-law and to have
• 2:18:26
  grandbabies running around. I never thought that we would
• 2:18:29
  get here. So to the family member that's
• 2:18:33
  out there praying for their prodigal son or daughter, don't
• 2:18:37
  underestimate the value of prayer and walking with your kid
• 2:18:41
  and praying from a place of victory because victory has a
• 2:18:45
  sound and his name is Jesus. Amen.
• 2:18:48
  You mentioned your mom earlier who you love very much.
• 2:18:51
  She's passed, but you mentioned that before she passed she had a
• 2:18:55
  conversion and I'd love you just share about that briefly if you
• 2:18:59
  can. Yeah, so my mom was in jail at
• 2:19:03
  the time and at the time I was homeless and and I had a lot of
• 2:19:08
  anger and resentment with my mom.
• 2:19:09
  That was a lot of the reason why I was drinking and making poor
• 2:19:12
  choices. I woke up in my car here in
• 2:19:15
  Temecula. We're not here, but you know
• 2:19:18
  what I mean? Like in Southern California,
• 2:19:21
  woke up in my car and the Lord said today's the day that you're
• 2:19:24
  going to forgive your mom. And I started yelling at God
• 2:19:27
  saying why would I forgive her? You know, she's done this, that
• 2:19:29
  and the other. My phone rings and it's an
• 2:19:32
  unknown number. I answer it says, will you
• 2:19:34
  receive this collect call from XY and Z jail?
• 2:19:37
  It's my mom and I'm like, OK, that's weird.
• 2:19:41
  I answered the phone and my mom says, baby, you'll, you'll never
• 2:19:44
  believe it. I have something to tell you.
• 2:19:45
  And I was like, that's weird, mom, I have something to tell
• 2:19:48
  you. And she's like, I woke up this
• 2:19:51
  morning and God said, I'm taking away every desire that you have
• 2:19:54
  to drink. And she's like, I woke up.
• 2:19:56
  And after I heard the Lord say that to me, I have no desire to
• 2:19:59
  drink alcohol. And she started asking for
• 2:20:01
  forgiveness and asking if she could rebuild a relationship
• 2:20:04
  with me. And I said, mom, the Lord woke
• 2:20:07
  me up right now and told me today I have to forgive you.
• 2:20:11
  And I said, I'm going to choose to forgive you.
• 2:20:14
  That was the best decision of my life because I got to have three
• 2:20:18
  sober years with my mom, three years of just having a
• 2:20:23
  relationship with my mom. And it was the best three years
• 2:20:27
  of my life. And I'm very grateful that I had
• 2:20:30
  that opportunity. And unfortunately, you know,
• 2:20:32
  some of my siblings didn't get to have that opportunity with my
• 2:20:34
  mom because the pain that we went through, it was difficult.
• 2:20:38
  And I don't, I don't like to talk about a lot of what we went
• 2:20:41
  through because I want to talk about, you know, just what I
• 2:20:43
  went through. I don't think it's fair for me
• 2:20:44
  to share too much of what they went through.
• 2:20:47
  That's their testimony to share if they want to share.
• 2:20:51
  But I'm very grateful that I got to have that moment with her and
• 2:20:55
  those positive memories before she met the Lord.
• 2:20:57
  So she hasn't. She didn't.
• 2:20:59
  She wasn't alive long enough to see the full.
• 2:21:02
  Detransition the full Oh my gosh, she was begging Nick and I
• 2:21:06
  to like try and have kids or she'd ask about grandbabies.
• 2:21:10
  I'm so glad that she was there for the wedding at least, you
• 2:21:13
  know? But when I did detransition, I
• 2:21:17
  guess that's another thing that I can tell Christians or just
• 2:21:19
  just believers in general, is when you see someone
• 2:21:22
  detransition that is identifying as a man to a woman, walk
• 2:21:26
  alongside that woman, like be their spiritual Mama and ask
• 2:21:31
  them if they want to get their nails done or if they want to go
• 2:21:33
  out and I don't know, go shopping.
• 2:21:35
  Because I didn't have my mom for that.
• 2:21:38
  And I feel like I really grieved that even more.
• 2:21:40
  It was like I grieved and then I had to grieve again because my
• 2:21:43
  mom was fashionista. She knew everything.
• 2:21:46
  She would have loved to like, teach me how to do makeup and
• 2:21:49
  all of that. And I just didn't have that.
• 2:21:51
  And so I really grieved and mourned, you know, not being
• 2:21:55
  able to have those memories with mom.
• 2:21:58
  But I started praying and I'm like, Lord, I pray that you
• 2:21:59
  bring the right women in my life.
• 2:22:01
  And the Lord did. And I got a makeover.
• 2:22:04
  And, you know, I had a woman teach me how to do my makeup.
• 2:22:06
  Thank you. So.
• 2:22:08
  Very cute pregnant lady over here.
• 2:22:11
  Thank you Lex, your story is so incredible.
• 2:22:13
  I know that there's even more to it.
• 2:22:16
  I really want to get Nick out here.
• 2:22:18
  Tell me you'll come back. Yes.
• 2:22:20
  Absolutely. And just praise God.
• 2:22:22
  Oh my goodness, what glory you bring to God and what an
• 2:22:26
  incredible story testimony you have.
• 2:22:28
  It's still in the works, right? We're both still in the works
• 2:22:30
  here, but it's just bringing so much glory to Him.
• 2:22:33
  And I just want to thank you for your vulnerability, your
• 2:22:37
  courage, your love. It is such a blessing.
• 2:22:40
  I know to everybody listening, and I know it honors our Father
• 2:22:43
  in heaven. Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:22:45
  How can people find your ministry?
• 2:22:47
  Oh, you can find us on Instagram.
• 2:22:49
  That's our main platform, but we're on all social medias under
• 2:22:51
  revived travelling ministry. We wrote a children's book
• 2:22:54
  called Jesus My Gender and His Perfect Love, and I also wrote a
• 2:22:58
  women's devotional that's that's just was released so you can
• 2:23:02
  find both. And you're writing your your
• 2:23:04
  own, yes? Writing our men so excited for
• 2:23:06
  that yes we're hoping it'll be finished by the end of this
• 2:23:09
  coming year so I'll. Pray for that.
• 2:23:11
  Thank you. That's so exciting.
• 2:23:12
  Thank you so much, Lex. Yes, thank you.
• 2:23:15
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• 2:23:25
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• 2:23:33
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• 2:23:35
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• 2:23:43
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