Frying Pans From Heaven: When A Transgender Person Sends You An Email…

Last updated on: July 25, 2016 at 10:54 am by Kerry Connelly

Frying Pans From Heaven: When A Transgender Person Sends You An Email… 2016-07-25T10:54:13-04:00 Kerry Connelly

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Sometimes, a call to ministry is a soft whisper, a leaning of the heart, a gentle voice that pushes you forward toward a choice of vocation, or school, or activity. It’s a beautiful process, an awakening of the soul to one’s purpose, and it’s something for which we should praise God. Sometimes, God is gentle with us, and calls us with this soft touch of ministry.

And sometimes, he drops an anvil on our head.

Sometimes, frying pans from heaven smack you upside the face, and leave you with cartoon stars spinning around your head before you go, “Oh. So, like, you want me to do this?”

There’s been this little pin prick in my heart for many years — a little thorn that gets agitated every once in a while. Every time I think about the transgender community and church, that thorn digs a little deeper. The best word to use, in fact, would be dysphoria. I am very uneasy with the way the church treats the transgender community.

Or not, as the case may be.

Truth be told, for all the conversations we’re having about homosexuality and the church, transgender folk have been largely left out of the equation. I think the reasons fall on a spectrum that runs from hate and fear to a real sense of “I just have no idea how to handle this so I’ll just look at this squirrel over here,” kind of mentality. What a cute squirrel.

The problem is that transgender people are just that: people. With souls inside of them that God cares about deeply. When we marginalize these people, when we make them feel unwelcome in our homes or our churches, whether because they simply make us uncomfortable or because we think it’s what God would have us do, we are not practicing the radical, grace-filled Gospel that Jesus calls us to. We are not practicing Crazy Jesus Love when we do this.

Because here’s the thing: the Crazy Jesus Love that God calls us to as Jesus Freaks is a love that will make us really fucking uncomfortable. And if you’re not uncomfortable when you practice it, it’s very possible you’re just practicing your own kind of love.

Which is all well and good, but let’s just call it what it is.

So this has been a burden on my heart for a long time, and I’ve often wondered who God would send to minister and care for this community. Enter the frying pan.

I received an email from a person, who I’ll call K, who is both transgender and mad in love with Jesus. She claims, in her words, to experience dysphoria — but not around her gender identity. That’s pretty solid — she knows she’s a woman in a man’s body. Her dysphoria comes in calling herself a Christian. Not because she doesn’t believe in Jesus — she does. But because this American Christian culture that we’ve created, where we must always seek out excellence with one hand while we dish out a nice big helping of hate with the other is simply not something with which her soul aligns.

Her email was beautiful, and she helped me realize that here it is: my ministry. I’m not saying I’m going to be a pastor and start a church full of drag queens and transgender folks (learning opportunity: they’re not necessarily the same), but if somehow my words ease their souls, and reassure them that they are radically loved by God, then my work here is — well, not done, but at least identified.

K has some stuff to say, and with her permission, I’m sharing some of her emails here. I’m hoping it will be a learning experience for you, as it will be for me, to read her words. Scroll through her most moving, poignant stuff by clicking continue, and open your heart to a Crazy Jesus kind of Love that might make you a little uncomfortable. And that’s not such a bad thing.

The God-space here is big and roomy.

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