Imagine being a guy walking through life where you see the man and woman figurines on top of a wedding cake, but don’t relate to the scene. Something deep inside simply doesn’t register. It’s not that as a guy, you’re not seeing the details, it’s something else, something deeper you haven’t discovered.
Then when you do discover it, that you’re transgender, it makes sense; you only identify with being the woman in the dress figurine on top of that wedding cake.
But, there’s something deeper to this reality that no one talks about, it’s being somewhere in the middle. Often times being transgender means not being either fully male or fully female. Whether we think it, feel it, or look it, we don’t fit…our hearts often feel this deep, awful tug, but we refuse to talk about it. Moving forward even with this pain is key. Keep moving forward, the pain will go away.
But will it? Depressing is that sinking, painful feeling you get when you realize you’re not on the cake, and you don’t have a chance to ever truly be one of those figurines. Why? All one has to do is put on a tux or a dress! No, it’s not that simple. The façade of fitting-in is never enough. (That feeling that “all is right with his life” is a façade. But he doesn’t know any better at the time.)
When girls are little, they dream of finding the right guy for their wedding day. He will be wearing the tux, her in the dress. Or if she’s gay, and finding the right girl to either wear the tux or the dress on her big day.
As a guy, well, guys don’t think of these things until around the wedding day when he’s proud to see the figurines on top of the cake, he’s in the tux and she’s in the dress, as it should be! This makes society happy, this makes the guy feel like all is right with the world and his life.
(This breaks the golden rule about shame: never should on yourself and never should on others).
But what if one is transgender? They don’t fit into either scenario. They can’t be on the cake by society’s definition.
He was me. I wore the tux, did all the right things, played by all the rules, it was a fun and most memorable day! But as I look back now, I was never on top of the cake…I was never truly male and never truly female. However, I could not see this until the last couple years.
And that’s where the painful black hole exists, those that are transgender are never dreamed of, there’s no place for them on the wedding cake. No little girl or little boy grows up with grande dreams of marrying a transgender person, ever. No little boys are trained to think of how beautiful his transgender bride will be! No little girl wonders in happy awestruck fervor that she will marry a handsome transgender man or woman. The cold reality is this NEVER happens. No one EVER dreams of us.
There’s no place for us on this figurative wedding cake of life. We have to make a place. We have to look into the hearts of others and ask that we be accepted for who we are. We have to go the extra mile to be more emotionally open than others, that people can see deeply in our hearts even when others hearts are not open to such transparency, so we can show the world we are decent neighbors. We have to continually work against knowing that we’re not accepted in society yet ask others we trust to “go to bat” for us, which can possibly cause them personal social issues with their peer groups. We swim upstream daily against deeply embedded yet false notions that we are delusional, confused, and being led by demonic spirits. We can barely see being on top of any wedding cake with so many life issues being tossed our way. We rely on those who know us for support, for love, for being the backbone of our existence and to help change the current.
Those who know us, know love, they know how to give love and how to receive love.
It takes the love of others to bridge the painful emotional gap between not being on the cake and having a chance one day to actually be there. It takes love to go beyond the usual understandings to see that a transgender human is a human with a soul, that has feelings, dreams, aspirations, isn’t an abomination but rather a treasure to God and man. It takes love to accept someone different.
It takes love to bridge the gap.
It takes love. The Jesus kind of love that gives but doesn’t ask for anything in return. The kind of love from others that takes away the pain of being different, including being transgender.
Maybe the mind’s eye vision of being on the wedding cake isn’t proper adolescent dream after all…but rather finding those who love like Jesus is really what it’s all about.