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(Work-in-progress)

Name: Samantha Angel Talpin

A.K.A.: Super Nerd Woman

Age: 35

Race: Human, Caucasion

It was a cold and stormy night.  She –

“No! No! No!  You cannot start a story with such a cliche phrase!  Start on a tangent.

Faster and faster the car raced.  Sam was pushing her body’s and her car’s endurance into the red zone.

Over and over one thought consumed her.  “Get away.  Gotta get away.”

Behind her a dozen vehicles were losing ground.  Sam’s neural link turned her car into an extension of her body.  That she was linked to the famous Hades car got her out of trouble quickly.

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Great Article

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/08/26/where-in-the-bible-does-it-say-you-cant-be-transgender-nowhere/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.86f950509f43

 

Genesis 1:27 says: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” It’s this interpretation of “and” between male and female that creates a foundation for understanding gender to be binary. But the “and” isn’t meant to be binary.

Genesis 1:1 says: “God created the heavens and the earth.” In reading this verse, Christians interpret that God created not just the sky and the ground but everything in between. The “and” encompasses a spectrum by pointing to the two ends of the spectrum. Similarly, scripture says God is the “alpha and omega,” the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. That’s not meant to say God is just those two letters. God is the entire alphabet, from alpha to omega and everything in between. As Alan Hooker and others have noted, Christians acknowledge throughout scripture that “and” represents a spectrum, not a binary.

 

Topics for YouTube

I’d like to make a video but need topics and notes on each topic.

1. Side effects of keeping your dysphoria hidden
   1. When anyone starts to get close, to prevent exposure you will lie, redirect the conversation, even become hostile.
   2. To accept who you are physically means lying to yourself.
   3. When asked how you are you lie with a smile rather than disclose how ugly you feel or how desperately you want to be the opposite sex.
2. Resolving my faith in Christ
   1. If God didn’t want me to change He would have provided some way for me to cope with my dysphoria.  I was desperate for years and was blessed but never did God help me deal with my dysphoria.  Not once.

 

Christian

Being transgender and Christian is tough. Many judge first, saying I am sinning and from that decide my punishment and pronounce me unfit or unworthy to carry the title of Christ Follower.

Yet He made me who and what I am. He calls me to be my authentic self. This authentic self is not defined by what I wear or how I look. It is based on how I act and what I think every moment of every day. If I use love as my guide I am doing well and fulfilling the Mosaic Laws. It is when I stop using love that I am sinning. This means no lasting judgement against anyone. I may judge guilty those that wrong me and I should forgive anyone who asks forgiveness. I leave God’s judgement up to God. He alone decides what is clean and what is not.

There’s a gotcha with love. I must also love myself, all of me. So long as I pretended to be a man on the inside I was neither loving nor authentic.

“I find any religion lacking that leads with judgment instead of leading with acceptance and love.” – Rev. Dr. Paula Stone Williams

The NY Times had an opinion piece on being transgender.  I found it following Paula’s story on the Internet.  The first story had me captivated.  It rang true, every word of it.  I had to read another.  I stopped myself from continuing.  I was already emotional and ready to cry.  The stories, just those 2 stories were pure reflections of my past.  They don’t tell my whole story but they certainly pointed out several highly important points.

I forced myself to go back and click instead on Paula’s story.  More truth resonated in my head.

As you grow older sometimes a path no longer feels like an option. It calls relentlessly toward the elusive land of authenticity that is always just over the horizon. You have built kingdoms, slain dragons, saved the world, but is time to go home, even if you’ve never been there before. It is time to walk through the door of the place that looks like it has been expecting you.”

– NY Times Opinion
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/opinion/transgender-today/stories/paula-stone-williams

I cannot tell you, even today, how often I look at a woman and say, “Lord, I wish I could ever be that beautiful.”

Inspired

Upon an important issue

Let us discuss with reasonable discourse, free of strong emotion that we may find agreement and disagreement.

Let us build from our agreement to overcome our differences.

And when we cannot find resolution, let us allow each other our differences that both may be expressed freely.  If not, all will be barred from expression.

 

Christian Talking, Part 2

Why do you crow about biology?  The flesh is full of decay and death!  Saving the flesh at the expense of the heart leads to death, not eternal life.

How can you decide to follow this law and not that?  It was not God who broke the laws into groups.  It was men.  And it was MEN who tell us to ignore these laws but not those.

Hypocrites!  Do you not see how it corrupts the law and in so doing corrupts hearts?  We bicker over which of God’s laws to ignore as if we have command over the law!  We become so focused on actions we fail to love one another as Jesus commands.

Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven

Matthew 5:17-19

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19 Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

He doesn’t invalidate the law, rather He makes it so that the law is no longer binding.  As Paul states, that isn’t cause to run out and be lawless.

But why was Paul so vague?  He didn’t say that we would be condemned for breaking the law.  He said that grace would not be increased by being lawless.  Yet we are not punished for breaking the law as long as we believe.

Paul was saying that to ignore the law leads to pride and inflated ego.  We can quickly and easily become haughty with others.  “Oh, yeah?  Well, I’m saved and you’re not!”  This has the effect of driving others away. Rather we must show love and inclusion for everyone regardless of circumstance.

https://www.gotquestions.org/abolish-fulfill-law.html

Furthermore, as Jesus states, for us to pick this command and not that, we will be the least in Heaven. God didn’t give us cause to group the laws and decide for ourselves what to follow. If we are to follow the law, we must follow all of it. But if Jesus fulfills the law, then we are freed from the curse placed on us by the law.

I like to use the man on the cross next to Jesus as an example. The ONLY thing he did was believe. There was no repentance shown, nor did he ask forgiveness. He simply believed and ask that Jesus include him in heaven. Luke 23:39-43

So if we break a law yet we believe and we show love, we are still forgiven.

Repentance is the word most Christians like to use to condemn me. Yet the idea that repentance is a requirement for salvation flies in the face of so many passages starting with the obvious John 3:16. Repentance is about turning away from those things that lead to a corrupt heart.
I think Luke 8:12-15 helps explain the idea.

I can’t tell you the number of people calling themselves “Christian” who feel justified in judging others and proclaiming truth over others. It’s really sad.

Our calling is not to follow the law. It is to love one another as Jesus love us. It is to live with the love of God overflowing in our lives that others may see and find His grace and be saved.

 

Christian Talking

I am a Christian transgender woman.  That’s quite a mouth full.

All my life I have felt a connection with the universe that transcends the physical world.  I can feel an unseen power.  For many years I called that power “energy” for a long time.  Now I call it the Holy Spirit.  It surrounds us.  It binds us.  And it affects us in subtle ways we cannot begin to understand.

I was born in to a middle-class family.  My mother has always been dedicated to God.  My father has always been dedicated to science.  From that I grew up learning science, loving the natural world and dedicating myself to technology – especially that new thing: the home computer.  But I was also introduced to God many times.  I respected religion but I never really believed.  I don’t think I even qualified as a Sunday Christian most years

But life conspired to show me an amazing pastor and a dedicated wife.  Together I was brought before God where I became a Sunday Christian.  But my faith was good and strong.

Then VdC happened.  First my wife went and came back changed for the better.  She was more tolerant, more loving and highly dedicated to God.  She even stopped listening to “secular” music.  I was so impressed I attended the next gathering.  It was amazing!  I learned so much about what it should mean to be a Christian.  It was a powerful powerful experience.  I attended a 2nd and 3rd time.  Loving and giving over and over.  It was like the more we gave the better we were at giving and the more we could give.  We helped each other in ways far beyond rational explanation.  In one case my wife came down with a really bad migraine headache.  She was laying in bed, unable to think when all of a sudden it lifted.  The migraine drained away revealing a chant outside.  Others heard of her dilemma and surrounded her bungalow, praying for healing.  She hasn’t had a migraine end so suddenly before nor since.  Praise God!

From that first trip to VdC camp North of Los Angeles my heart opened as wide as the Grand Canyon.  I could feel love so deep it was beyond measure.  I could feel the energy of the trees and grass and insects.  Everything.  It changed my life.  And in that time I gave my whole self to God.

And that’s where it got interesting.  In the midst of all this, my gender dysphoria was still very active.  I lived as a man, hiding my femaleness from everyone and everything.  God doesn’t want me to be a woman, right?  And I gave that up to God.

He gave it back.

I remember it like yesterday.  I stood on a mountainside as the sun rose between 2 peaks on the other side of a wide valley.  The air was cool and crisp.  It was so quiet you could almost hear your heartbeat.  I closed my eyes and gave up everything to God.  For a time I was free.  No pain, no stress, no dysphoria.

Within 10 minutes the dysphoria was back.  It was a bit of a let-down but I persisted.  The feeling of love was enough to carry me.

Still I persisted being a man for another 2 years.  I dedicated much of myself to hiding.  Nobody could know my secret.  I could not be the person God made me on the inside.

You cannot imagine the stress.  It built and built because I would not submit.  I am a Godly man.  And when it became too much I sought help.  Christians prayed and prayed.  The same Christians that cured a migraine could do nothing to even dent my torment.  I looked elsewhere but it all required extensive driving or money I couldn’t afford.  And so no help came, no help could be found.  And I suffered an anguish beyond measure. I felt like my heart was being torn apart all the time.

Then we moved.  We left California for Raleigh.  It’s the closest you can get to California weather on the East coast plus my wife and I both have family here.  And I knew God wanted it because I was hired sight-unseen by FujiFilm after just 3 phone interviews.  I was the only employee to get this treatment.  They even paid to move us.  We arrived and exactly when we needed a house, the perfect place became available.  We literally signed the rental contract as the moving truck pulled up.

Now a new voice arose in me.  It wasn’t love or light.  It was the sound of my soul screaming in torment.  At first it was a faint sound like nails on a chock board heard from 100 feet away.  Nearly every waking minute became a deepening torment.  That feeling of being ripped apart grew stronger.  The sound of my soul grew louder and louder until it consumed my thoughts.

But I persisted.  I had a wife and child.  They expected a husband and father.

We moved into a new home.  For the first time we owned the home in which we lived.

But the screaming and ripping torment grew stronger.  It took all my energy just to get through the day, let alone do anything productive.

Still I persisted until I used up everything I had.  I burned my heart, my soul then burned my relationships.  And a feather dropped on me and everything crashed.

With my last breath I prayed God would bring me home.

Darkness took me as I lost my mind.  My body started to shut down.

But God wasn’t done with me.  He brought me back with a start.  I was so depressed I could hardly breath.  And then I realized God left me naked.  All my walls were gone.  All my coping mechanism were useless.

Within a minute of waking I felt an urgency I’ve never known: go insane in endless torment or change my body.  There was nothing else.

Okay, okay.  I’ve told people suicide was a 3rd option.  And, yes, I could kill myself.  But that was never a real option, not since I stood on the roof at the age of 18, ready to drop.  God brought me back from that as well.  After that, suicide was never an option.  No matter how bad things got, I could not even irrationally consider suicide.

Can you imagine being tortured until your mind is completely lost?

How can you compare that to Internet porn or even alcoholism?  Even alcoholics have to seek their poison.  My tormentors stood all around me every day.  There is no way to avoid all women forever.  And women were my torment.  They had by design what I needed to end my torture.

So that’s my background.

My next post is what I do moving forward.