LAURA SMALTS
“I had deep, bitter resentment against my mother that had gone unresolved for years, and as a result, I rejected all that she represented.
”
I developed feelings of confusion about my sex early in childhood. Raised in a Christian home, I had a strained relationship with my mom, who exhausted herself trying to be the perfect Christian. Frequently agitated and irritable, she often didn’t want me around because I was hyper. To reinforce the sting, I learned she had miscarried two boys before having me. “You likely wouldn’t be here if either of them had lived,” she told me one day. Though her words were not meant to hurt me, I, naturally, felt guilty and rejected, which fed a deep inner turmoil about my identity as a girl. When I was molested at the age of eight, my behavior became very sexualized.
I spent the next 25 years trying to get fulfillment and love through sex. Feeling objectified by men in high school, I began to believe being female was disgusting, filthy, and worthless. I was sure I should have been a man, so I began the journey of “transitioning” to transform my appearance.
In 2007, at the age of 25, I started living full-time as Jake, and I thought I was on the road to freedom. If only I could have seen the hell that lay ahead. Before undergoing any surgeries or receiving drugs to alter my physical appearance, I was required to attend at least three one-hour counseling sessions with a licensed therapist. I had no interest in counseling. Anyone who needs counseling is crazy, I thought. I only went because it was required. During the third session, the therapist put down her notebook, looked right into my eyes, and said, “Wow, you really have issues with your mom.” I was stunned! How did we get from talking about how I was really a man to talking about my mother? I blew up and spat back, “I am not here to talk about my mom!” She looked at me sadly and said softly, “So, you just want me to give you the letter?" (The letter would state I had been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder to authorize me to begin hormones. The letter would also give me access to locker rooms and bathrooms if needed.) “Yes!” I snapped back. “That’s all I’m here for. I don’t need therapy!”
Looking back, I think she knew the truth: I had deep, bitter resentment against my mother that had gone unresolved for years, and as a result, I rejected all that she represented, including femininity. If I had allowed her to help me work through those issues, I don’t think I would have ever gone down the transgender road. Sadly, at the time, I was already convinced I was a man trapped in a woman’s body and not willing to listen to another opinion. So I took my letter and ran.
I first began taking testosterone by injection. My voice began to deepen, I had more energy, I had an increased sex drive, and I was less emotional. Soon, I began to see my body composition change as my body and face began to look more masculine. (Later, the hormones began to make my face look puffy. This is a side-effect that happens in many female-to-male “gender transition” procedures. The hormones cause extraordinary weight gain and can make the face look swollen.) Eventually, I began to grow a beard, had a double mastectomy/chest reconstruction, had all my female procreative organs removed, and had all of the legal name- and gender- status changes so I could pass exclusively as a man.
But after years of hormones and surgeries, I was empty and broken. I was devastated to realize that none of the changes I was making had actually made me a man, and I knew they never would. All I had done was change the outside. The result? I felt trapped in a world between male and female. I had often described myself before “coming out” as having been wearing a mask of a female identity. But within three years, my transgender identity had become the mask. What had promised to be freedom had, in fact, become my prison cell. I soon became enslaved to wearing clothes that never quite fit, injecting myself over and over with needles (hormones), and wearing prosthetics (a constant reminder of how fake it all was).
But as the years passed, God gently drew me back toward Him. Though my relationship with my parents had been almost non-existent for years, aside from the occasional phone call or dinner meeting, my mom hired me to make a website for the Bible study she was teaching. Though I had no interest in Bible study, I agreed because I needed both the money and the experience. Little did I know God would use this project to crumble the defensive walls of pride that had kept Him on the outside for so long. As I read the words in the lessons, the ice that encased my heart began to melt. For the first time in my life, I began to see God’s love and faithfulness in His Word.
Over the next few months, I began to call my mom every day after work. She patiently answered my questions about the Bible. One day, I said, “Mom, how did I get here? Six months ago, I was 180 degrees from where I am now. All I want is to hear the Word of God.” She said, “I have been praying that God would draw you back like a magnet.” And that’s exactly what He had done! What’s more, I realized that the angry, stressed-out, exhausted, legalistic mother I grew up with had been completely transformed, and her religion had been exchanged for real faith. The moment I recognized the dramatic changes in my mom was the moment I knew that the gospel was true. As a result, I wholeheartedly gave my life to Christ.
For the months that followed, I wrestled with God. I wanted so desperately to be a godly man. And I tried convincing myself that God had intended me to be a man. Then I heard Dr. Everett Piper on the radio say, “We are not just made up of our feelings, instincts, and inclinations. But we are made in the image of God, and we can choose our behavior, despite how we feel.” As I began to wrestle with his words and admit that my circumstances were a choice, God began to reveal the unattractiveness and the irrationality of a “transgender” identity. One night, He asked me, "If you stood before me tonight, what name would I call?” That question stopped me in my tracks. I had hoped so desperately that God accepted me as Jake. But then, in the most loving voice I have ever heard, the Creator of the Universe whispered to me, “Let me tell you who you are.”
Hit hard with conviction, I became desperate to escape this false identity and all that went with it, but I was afraid it was too late. I had lived in complete stealth, as I called it: no one except family, and my partner knew I was a woman. I didn’t know how to fix it. Over the next month, I struggled and cried out to God.
Then, one night, I had a clear vision of Jesus getting down on one knee, reaching into the pit with arm outstretched toward me. He asked, “Do you trust me?” I knew He was asking me to leave everything and follow Him in faith. In turn, I walked away from everything I had known to follow Christ: my job, my partner of almost eight years, my financial security, and my entire identity. As difficult as it was, God cut the cord on my old life in miraculous ways. When I began to attend my mom’s Bible study, I was met with overwhelming love from women I did not even know; they affirmed me and loved me as a woman, completely transforming my heart. The belief that I was meant to be a man, in fact, vanished. Immediately, I began to wear feminine clothing as God continued to peel away the layers of the proverbial onion to restore my identity. People who’ve known me are often shocked at how feminine I have become, and it’s no act. I have simply allowed God to peel off the false masculinity in which I had covered myself.
Today, completely reconciled to my family, I continue to experience God’s healing and restoration. In May of 2021, He brought an incredible man into my life, Perry Smalts, and we married a year later in 2022. Perry is a husband beyond my wildest dreams. I had always believed the lie that I was not good enough to be a wife, that I was too emotional, and that I was “damaged goods.” I wondered, What man could ever accept not only my past as a “trans man” but also my sexual past? Perry, a bi-vocational music minister and associate pastor who also works in insurance, has not only accepted and loved me but also says he doesn't see me as someone who once identified as transgender. He sees me as the new creature God created me to be when Christ came into my life (2 Corinthians 5:17). God has used Perry not only to love me but also to teach me about Christ’s love for His bride.
First Stone Ministries: firststone.org