Jesus Christ Show | Hour 2 - Child is transgender [07/14]

Child is transgender

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to KFI AM six ondemand. Trish, Welcome to The Jesus
Christ Show. Hello, Hi,tris uh I. My child is transgendered.
My daughter, you know, youknow that she grew up my daughter

(00:23):
and my husband died. I don'tknow if this plays into it or not.
The timing is weird. Four yearsago, and you know, after
that, I kind of checked outfor a while. I had a hard
time coping. And in four abouta year and a year after my husband
died, my daughter came out tome and said that he's a man.

(00:46):
And since in the subsequent three years, he has undergone a couple surgeries and
has been on testosterone and it hastotally changed. And I love my child,
but I've feel like I've lost mydaughter. This is not the same
person. Personality is different, nothis loving and much more angry. And

(01:11):
I think that's the testosterone. AndI just feel like my daughter's gone and
this is a new person I haveto love, and it's hard because his
lifestyle. He's come out as agay man, and his lifestyle I find
disturbing and scary because I've known gaymen who's died in the eighties and there

(01:36):
are risks with that lifestyle, andI just I worry about him, and
I worry that he's gone taken himselfso far into this life, this agenda
he works and thinks and everything hetalks about is GLBT, and I can

(02:00):
I love him and I resent him. And also because I lost my daughter,
and my daughter's gone and she wasa beautiful, a beautiful girl,
and my husband a daughter, andI don't know how to cope with this
sometimes, and you know, sometimesI can just kind of push it back

(02:23):
and keep it at bay. Andthen sometimes, you know, I think
about it or my husband and Ihave a hard time, and you know,
I feel like I failed, andI, you know, it was
my husband died suddenly, but hehad a chronic illness and I had to
take on more with financial responsibility andthe family, and maybe, you know,

(02:45):
I don't know if this is therejection of me. I don't know
if this is the rejection of us. You know, my husband and I
are are our Christianity, because hehates Christians now, you know, they're
the enemy. I just really don'tknow how to cope with this and do
it in a loving manner. Andyou know, I try to be around

(03:08):
them, and I find it soabrasive and so hard to deal with.
Well, first, there's so muchgoing on, and I really wanted you
just to continue to get it outof your system and say what you needed
to say, because it's very importantfor a couple of reasons. One to

(03:28):
be honest with yourself into where youstand on all of this is very important,
but also for people to hear bothsides of the situation. I know
right now there's a lot of embracingand I will tell you rightly so of
those that are in that situation oftrying to write what they feel is a
wrong by birth, and that's avery powerful thing. And what ends up

(03:57):
happening though in that process is there'san overshadowing of what's taking place on the
other side of things and the peoplethat have to wrestle with losing someone or
a familiarity or things like that.So it's not something we're going to be
able to put in a box andwith a nice bow on it and hand

(04:17):
it to you at the end ofa couple of minute phone call. But
a couple of things that I dowant you to think about are it's okay
for you to mourn the loss ofyour daughter, because that does take place,
That really does. And I thinkpeople are fearful of saying that because
they think that it's automatically a judgmentand towards the transgender community. And it's

(04:41):
not. It's a reality. Soif you think of it this way,
if you take all the politics offit, and you strip all of that
and the emotions and all those things, and you think of it like a
cult, you have a lot ofpeople that get into these cults and then
and then they come out of them, like somebody comes, maybe a missionary
comes and starts to teaching them aboutthe gospel and they pull them out of

(05:02):
the cult. Well, everyone cheersand goes, oh, yeah, they're
out of the cult. In theChristian community, they cheer, they go,
oh, they're out of a cult. But what people fail to see
is that that person that's making thetransition out of the cult is wrestling with
something that they've been their whole lives. So they grew up with and they're
trying to find the balance. Sosimilarly, in this case, you have

(05:26):
somebody who is doing something very powerfuland very important. They're coming to you
and they're saying, I've been livinga lie and it doesn't feel right,
and I'm going to correct it,just as if they were born with a
cleft palate or something like that,and they're saying, you can't see it
like a cleft palate, but I'vefelt it my entire life and I need

(05:47):
to correct it. And not onlyis it going to affect me, but
it's going to affect everyone around me, because what they've known is partly me
and partly a lie that I've beenliving out of confusion and frustration. So
the place to land by the familyshould be the same reaction that you go

(06:14):
through with a cleft palate. You'dsay you're correcting this, and you would
be supportive of that, and Iwant to do everything you could to support
them. But then there's the emotionalside, which is, unlike the cleft
palate. You're attached to this partof this person that, in their description
is a lie. But you're going, well, that lie is all I

(06:35):
knew, and now this seems likea lie to me. But they're going,
no, this is not the lie. This is the truth, and
this is who I am. Sothat process is a difficult one for both
parties because the party who's saying,you know, I was living as a
girl and I'm not a girl,and I've got to correct that is feeling

(07:00):
the relief and the freedom of knowingwho they are and now living in that
space, and then everyone else aroundthem is mourning the loss of someone that
they felt they knew. And it'sgonna be there's gonna be new things.
I assure you, if you hada son at birth, you'd probably be
going through a lot of the samefrustrations with them being with their anger and

(07:24):
their gruffness and attitude and all thosethings too. It's just put on you
differently, and there's a lot ofemotion that's tied into those things during this
process, and it's okay to mourn. It's best to explain those things and
to have open conversations and talk aboutit. Has nothing to do with the
transgender part. Now onto some otherthings that you said as far as a

(07:48):
risky lifestyle. Risky lifestyle has nothingto do with gender, as it doesn't
have to do with being gay,doesn't have to do with being straight,
has to do with the end ofand what they do with that. So
I know that there is a lotof folks in the Christian community that like
to point out those things or tryingto make it look dangerous because then it

(08:09):
looks more noble to have bigotry orto be able to point things out.
But it's not always the case,and the facts are often skewed based on
the agenda in the church. Soyour job, here's the great news.
Your job remains the absolute same,Trish. You are a mom that hasn't

(08:33):
changed at all, and as amother, you're there to be there.
You were there for your daughter andnow you're going to be there for your
son to the best of your ability. It's not rebellion. It's not because
the timing I know of your withyour husband dying, you may see,
gosh, this is some reaction tothat. No, and it's not a
reaction to how you raised him.It's not a reaction to any of those

(08:56):
things. It is for whatever reason, I'm where your daughter said, I've
been living this lie and I'm notgoing to do it anymore. And maybe
it was jarred by the death andgave her that freedom to say I'm no
longer a her, I'm a he, and to fulfill something that she had

(09:20):
been battling with. But at thispoint he is who he is, and
you are his mother, and youare to love and guide and do the
best you can. And as faras the enemy part with Christianity, Christianity
should be should find its place notin being the world's police. And this

(09:45):
is this thing with Christianity, Trish, and it's it's Christianity should not be
the enemy of people. And soto hear that your son looked as somebody
in the gay and transgender community looksat Christianity Christianity as the enemy breaks my

(10:07):
heart because that's not the truth.And I think that there's a lot of
people that are speaking up for Christianityin ways that are unhealthy and non productive
and are only about their own agendaor beliefs, and not about the Gospel
and the beauty of the Gospel andthe importance of the Gospel. So you

(10:28):
continue to be a mother, Youcontinue to love your boy, and to
guide and to answer questions when asked, and to be an example to show
you that Christianity and that you arenot the enemy of your son. You're
the mother of your son. Christianityis not just a book of laws.

(10:56):
There was already a book of laws, and I still can't there was the
Torah, and there was those laws, and it's more than the laws.
When asked about the laws, Isaid that I wasn't here to break them
or get rid of them, butto fulfill them. Very different, and

(11:16):
Christianity is probably in need of anotherreformation. Christianity has gone through a lot
over the years. And it's funny. You had the first Church having a
reformation, and the first Church said, oh, they we're not in need
of a reformation. And then youhave the Protestants and now the Catholics,

(11:37):
and there's a split. Strangely enough, now you have Protestants running around and
that are hearing me say that thechurch is in need of a reformation and
they're doing the same thing. Whathow dare you? Of course not,
We're fine. And why I saythat is that when things start getting very
legalistic, and I don't mean liberalversus conservative in the sense that it's like,

(12:00):
do whatever you want and say you'rea Christian, it's not the case.
And if you've listened to this programfor any length of time, you
know that is absolutely not where weland. However, there is much that
is going on with the church,and a lot of splitting in the church
to begin with a lot of miscommunicationand misunderstandings. But the church is at

(12:22):
a place right now where it isgoing back to a very legalistic footing,
where it's really less about the gospeland about teaching people about the Gospel and
more about trying to control an environmentthat they feel most comfortable in. And
when it gets to that place,when it's more about using the Bible to
just keep things the same, justdon't rock the boat, don't make things

(12:45):
different, don't allow anything different tocome in. Is when you look around
and say, now, this isno longer about the good News, It's
no longer about the Gospel. Thisis about your comfort level, and that
should never be what leads the church. Monica, Welcome to Jesus Christ.

(13:09):
Show hi hip. I help you. I have a big problem. I
just I need song advice or help. I feel like I'm losing my song.
He is a teenager seventeen years old, and he's always been a good

(13:31):
kid, doing good in school.That he's being lately, maybe a month
ago, she's just been at theout of control. It's making out of
the house in the middle of thenight. He has a car and taking
the car lying, uh h,I don't know. You know, we're

(13:54):
mothers with young We have an instinctin my instinct of the matter is telling
me them maybe she's doing drugs ordrinking. Well, at seventeen, that's
not a huge leap. You realizethat, yeah, there's a lot,
there's a lot of young people.Doesn't make it ripe. There's a young
a lot of young people that areexperimenting at that age with alcohol and the

(14:18):
lying. Do have people referred toyou? Has he referred to you or
anyone else ever referred to you ascontrolling? O? Got there? Okay?
When someone lies to you, there'sthere's two participants in that line.
They're the person who's lying, whichis a bad thing, and the other

(14:39):
person they're lying too. And oftenwhen people lie, they are lying to
someone because that person motivates them tolie. You've you've played a part,
or you've put him in a situationwhere it feels the need to lie.
That doesn't mean what he's lying aboutis okay or any of those things.
It's just saying that you play apart, and you should understand that part

(15:00):
because it's important to the relationship.He's seventeen years old, he's going to
want to find himself as a man, and he's going to distance himself from
both his mother and his father.It's human nature and to find himself.
Now, if you just guess,I realize woman's intuition is very powerful and
that they're very connected with their children. But you have to look and see

(15:24):
if you are trying to hold onto him in a way that repels him
and makes him feel like he hasto lie because he doesn't want to be
tethered down as he gets older.Yeah, I understand that. I mean,
I think I was a little overprotectiveof my kids, well especially him,

(15:48):
because I maybe she's thee all thisand he's a boy. But I've
been letting him let I've been tryingto let go a little bit of him,
and I think giving him like ifhe wants to go out with his
friends, I let him stay outtill maybe eleven eleven thirty. But there's

(16:10):
some day sometimes that he'll be home, like two or three in the morning,
and well, if he's in yourhome, you have the right to
make those rules. You absolutely havethe right to make those rules. And
if he's blowing past curfew, thenyou have to have some sort of repercussions
or consequences, but you have tolive by those consequences because he's he's going

(16:33):
to become eighteen and sooner or laterhe's just going to say, well,
I can do what I want.If you put someone in a cage,
when the cage is open, they'regoing to fly out. So if he
feels like he's been hovered over,he's going to want to experience some freedom.

(16:56):
That's why parenting is such a difficultbalance of trying to be partic and
trying to give someone their freedom asa human being, living, breathing human
being who wants to experience life,and that balance is very difficult. But
I assure you people will find theirown space. They just will. You
cannot control a person. So atseventeen years of age, boys often are

(17:22):
very not very smart and they doa lot of stupid things and they're foolish,
and that can be very frustrating fora parent. But he has to
find his own footing with your guidance. But that guidance has to be given
differently than it was before. Youcan't just control them. You can't ground

(17:44):
him and lock them up the sameway because just different. So you have
to find new ways to set reasonableboundaries for a seventeen year old in your
home and say these are the rulesof the house. So you know,
maybe it's getting a couple extra lots. Say the house is locked and you
don't have a key, the houseis locked at eleven thirty every night.

(18:08):
If you're not in, then findsomewhere else to go. But this is
these are the rules of this homefor now. And I love you and
I know you're growing into a youngman. But a young man with that
comes with responsibilities and consequences. Andthese are the rules of the house,
and he can live up to themor not. But you're just going to

(18:32):
be staying up anyways and staring atthe clock and worrying. So you have
to you have to land conclusively onwhat you're going to do as well,
to show consistency so that he doesn'ttake advantage of any breaches or breaks in
your emotions, because he will,that's what humans do. Yeah, give

(19:00):
him a little freedom. He needsto have some space. Now. I
will tell you this. You're stillthe parent and it's still your home.
I'm not saying, you know,cut the leash and let him go wherever
he wants. At all. He'sstill living at home and you're still the
parent. However, that's what hedoesn't understand, you know, because he
sneaks to snack out twice this week. I took his car away. I

(19:25):
took him, but two days agoshe sneak out and somebody came and picked
him up. Okay, well,then where's where's his father? Dream marriage?
His father is kind of und ofthe picture I see, and he

(19:47):
sees his dad maybe once or twicea month, and he's got his comproblems.
He's an alcoholic. Well, Iwould say that it's a a very
appropriate time for a discussion to shiftthe gear in the way you deal with
disciplining him. So sit him downand say, here's the deal. I'm

(20:11):
your mother and this is my home. You're not quite an adult yet.
I want you to have freedom becauseyou need to learn, you know,
and grow and all those things.So you tell me what I should do
when you disobey, or when youdon't come in, or when you're running
around. Knowing that I have fearsthat your father was an alcoholic and that

(20:33):
you may be going down a similarpath, or that you may be doing
things that are unhealthy or bad foryou and you let him. People can
be pretty rough on themselves. Soif you ask him, you say,
what do you think? So let'syou're growing up. I'm not going to
treat you like a child. Whatdo you think I should do? What
would you do if your child disobeyed, you didn't come home and sneaked out

(20:56):
of the house? And what wouldyou do if you're is since you're becoming
a young man, and let himprocess it and think through it and come
to conclusions with you on those things, and be a partner in that rather
than a child, because he's goingto rebel against being a child. It's
just it can be a problem.Now I'm going to give you a little

(21:21):
bit of homework. Maybe you canfind it at your local library. But
there's a book by John Eldridge calledWild at Heart. The subtitle is Discovering
the Secret of a Man's Soul.And although I don't agree with any book
other than Scripture, I will tellyou that there are some great insights to

(21:44):
the spirit of a man and ayoung man and how men think. And
I think, since since his father'snot in the picture, it might be
helpful for you to at least gothrough this book a little bit and understand
things. Now. There's also youknow, conversations about you know, hunting
and things like that, and I'mnot a huge fan of those things unless

(22:07):
it's for food. But there's thespirit of the book and the nature of
a man and men and how theyare looking for adventures in life and these
types of things I think to bevery important and illuminating to you as a

(22:29):
mother to see some of those things. Some of those things that might appear
to be rebellion are more exploratory andnot about rebelling against you, but exploring
what's out there. And you dohave to trust your gut and if you
see patterns, there's obviously going tobe different patterns as children grow, and

(22:49):
you're coming up against a big oneright now as they transition from childhood to
adulthood. Is a bizarre one becauseit's just an age at that it's like
eighteen, so that's legal. It'slike the expiration date on milk. Does
milk go bad the moment the expressionexpiration date comes around. No, it's

(23:11):
a guess based on many different factorsand observations. And same thing. You
don't become an adult because you're eighteenyears of age. You become adult based
on your experiences and your understanding ofthings and how you apply them to your
life. So I get that you'relooking through all these things saying, well,

(23:32):
you know, when do I jumpin? But there you're getting further
and further away from being able tojump in. And so now the tactics
need to change, and the wayyou connect with somebody that's older needs to
change, and it needs to becomesomething a little bit more of a partnership
than it is a dictatorship, parenting, controlling anything. When you are a

(24:00):
controlling person, and if you've heardthat before, often that ties into how
you deal with crisis or things aroundyou. And so what ends up happening
is you dislike crisis so much oryou're so worried about things changing in any
way, shape or form to tryand control them to the best of your
ability so you won't have to dealwith the change. Now. A mother

(24:22):
caring about our child, of course, is reasonable. I don't want anything
to happen to them. But alot of times, and you need to
search very deeply, a lot oftimes what you're fearing is the change if
something does happen. But people areindividuals. They're not meant to be kept

(24:45):
and they have to make their ownmistakes, and yes, they may even
get hurt. That happens. Badthings happen to people out in the world,
and you can't nerf the planet.As my producer Neil says, nerve
the world. There are sharp edges, and people will get hurt, and
people will make bad decisions. Asa parent, your hope is to instill

(25:10):
the best decision making tools and discernmenttools that you possibly can, and to
build up that toolbox so that yourson or daughter can go out into the
world and make the best decisions andtroubleshoot things that come their way. It's
not to put a bubble over themto protect them from everything, because one
that's not healthy and to it willnever work. And I realize that that

(25:36):
causes fear, and that's very scary. But again, often people who are
very controlling are not even thinking aboutthe other person. This is weird,
So bear with me on this notthinking about the other person, but how
it will affect their life if somethinghappens to the other person. It's very
strange and it comes from a dualplace of selflessness and self fishness. Simultaneously

(26:03):
because of course you're saying I don'twant something to happen to that person,
but ultimately it's I don't want somethingto happen to that person because it affects
me as well, and understanding thatis a very important thing. Rashaan,
Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show.Hello, Hi, how can I help

(26:23):
you? Good morning? Hi there. I was calling to find out our
marriage is bound by the law ofGod, essentially when the marriage is made.
Why would you question that I cameit to this relationship with two kids
already. When I had the secondchild, we decide to get married for
the kids, But really it's likewe love each other, but we're not

(26:47):
in love. We don't enjoy eachother's company. Okay, well that doesn't
matter. Okay, I know thatsounds that sounds harsh, but really that's
kind of a that's an emotion thing, that's not a reality thing people get
and to assume that it's not ordainedby God because of that is absolutely wrong.
What God wouldn't want you to bein is a relationship or someone was

(27:10):
hurting you or beating you up,or using verbal abuse, real verbal abuse,
not some you know, people beingheated in argument, but true verbal
abuse and belittling you and things likethat, or hurting the kids or hurting
anybody in the family outside of that, you make it work, Okay,

(27:32):
I know it's everybody looks for youknow that there's like this one person out
there for you and it's going tobe this magical experience. And that's just
not necessarily the case. That ifyou made the oath before God to be
in this marriage, then that's whatyou do, and you find a way
to fall in love again, orif you weren't ever in love then to

(27:56):
fall in love, then find away to fall in love with one another.
Okay, thank you very much,you're welcome. I'm sorry. I
know it's not what you wanted tohear. The marriage thing becomes this,
you know, movies and books andtelevision try and make it something. Love
is a decision. Sorry to removethe romance out of it. My producer

(28:18):
Neil, who's a hopeless, hopelessromantic I know, cringes that thought,
but that's the reality. Love isa decision. You decide to go into
it and then you live it.Period. This whole concept that oh,
well, you know, we're notin love with each other doesn't matter.

(28:40):
You've made a decision to be inthat relationship. You be in that relationship.
You're married now, and you makeit work. And if you have
kids, all the more reason toIt's this easy. Where's the rip chord?
Where you know? When can Ipull my parachute or I'm bored or
he you know he doesn't ring mybell anymore? Then you know what learned
to do it. If you've fallenout of love, trust me, you

(29:03):
can fall back into love. Andmy producer Neil always says that people fall
into love because no one's stupid enoughto walk into it knowingly. So when
you fall into love and you canfall out of love and you can fall
back into love, it is.It is a process. It is like
any other garden. It needs tobe watered, The weeds need to be

(29:27):
pulled. You need to give itattention. If you don't, yeah,
it will die. But you can'tjust go. It's not disposable. And
that attitude, it saddens me somuch because you're chasing a fantasy. That
fantasy doesn't exist. What does existis what you have in front of you.

(29:47):
So make it work, you know, do things that are loving participate
in the relationship in a loving way, and love will re enter that house.
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