Looking Forward By Looking Back

As I sit in anticipation of Ash Wednesday and the start of the Lenten season, I can’t help but reflect. To reflect on who I was and where I've been. With this season of the liturgical calendar fast approaching (no pun intended), we sit in reflection. So, I wanted to shift my focus to one of preparation. Preparing my soul for this time requires I be honest with myself on who I have been, and most importantly who I want to be. Lent is also a time of fasting from that which distracts us from our Lord, which is why I will be taking a serious break from Twitter during this season. But I cannot look forward in anticipation of this season without looking back on where I’ve been.

For me, given the role that Twitter has played in my life since I’ve transitioned, I must go back to that beginning. Not necessarily when I first created my account 14 years ago, but when "Natalie" first arrived. In early 2020, I officially “came out” and announced my social transition. I had been on hormones for nearly 3 years at that point but had originally expected to stay closeted. One of the most formative moments after that original coming out thread was when a friend who is a conservative pastor reached out to me. He had reached out privately, not to condemn me, but to assure me that even though he may not agree, or even understand, the decision to transition or what it even means to be transgender, he wanted me to know that he loved me and that I was his sister-in-Christ. He never denied my faith.

This simple act of love had a tremendous impact on me. Not just because I respect and love him, but because it created the framework for how I would see my future interactions with people who didn’t know quite where they stand, or even people who are vehemently opposed to who I am. These were also the “early days” of a wonderfully eclectic little online community of believers who had, all in differing ways, been battered and bruised by the church. I stumbled across Weird Christian Twitter and it honestly changed my life forever. Heck, without WCT, we very likely never find our way to Grand Rapids, MI.

There was no niche community for Christian trans people at the time. At the time, it felt like I was the only one. I know there were other Christians who are trans somewhere, but they weren’t in WCT spaces. It seemed as if it were almost a daily occurrence that I’d have someone tell me that I was the first trans person they ever knew. But when you’ve never been faced with something/someone, you most likely have never truly considered how you feel about it. It was a world of “messy, tense middle”. It was a tension of people who didn’t know how to feel, but they had been battered enough themselves that they were willing to wrestle and extend grace. They were willing to be curious. If I wanted to exist in Christian spaces, I had no choice but to do so with grace and patience. I had no choice but to get into the mud and muck with them. “Let’s wrestle together!”

Things began to change though. I began to change. More and more people began to come out and transition, and they began to find community in WCT. The community, on one hand, had grown more open and accepting through tireless work and relationship building, but on the other hand, we started seeing more radical anti-trans voices pop up. This coincided with the growing pushback in the political sphere that led to much more activism on both sides in society. I was not immune to this radicalization. I began to unconsciously drift towards a more activist mindset. I became more absolutist and hardline. My entire identity became centered on my “transness”.

I became very fundamentalist in my thinking. Instead of the religious fundamentalism I was raised in, I found myself in an equally toxic and harmful form of fundamentalism, but this one had a progressive veneer to it. In hindsight, I’m embarrassed that I didn’t see the red flags immediately. It’s the same pattern of demand for ideological purity, a “check the box” mentality where every dogmatic belief must be fully and unquestioningly affirmed, and viciousness will be directed at those who do not toe the line. It was merely the other side of the fundamentalist coin.

I became more and more combative, and my follower count shot up. That dopamine hit and damn it felt good. I fed off that for over a year. But, I began to see the cracks in the foundation, which isn’t hard when the entire structure is a house of cards. I began to notice that the increase in followers seemed to largely be those in that echo chamber of fundamentalism. We see this all the time across the spectrum. You begin to have people pat you on the back, you become popular, and you just keep performing as the group demands. I was attracting already like-minded people, but I wasn’t moving the needle. Due to the political landscape, I had been drawn into the self-defense of advocacy, and stopped focusing on drawing people in to love. Instead, I began stomping on their throats while bludgeoning people with shame.  

I had subconsciously given up the battle for the tense middle. I became the very thing that I had left as a young adult. Then something happened. I didn’t even notice until going through some self-reflection recently in preparation for this post. A friend whom I had helped counsel through her coming out and transition had made a comment that she had been frustrated by not being able to build a platform as an activist. It was then that something inside me told me I’d gotten off the rails, so to speak. I began to look around and notice things. I began to listen. Most of all, that wonderfully weird community that had wrapped their arms around me shortly after coming out had largely vanished from my algorithm.

Then I would hear things within my own community that didn’t sit right with me. I’m not here to cast judgement on what was being said. I understand past hurt can inform our rhetoric. But these were statements that were categorically and scientifically wrong. I also began to hear things that were entirely incompatible with Christian theology. Heather can tell you just how much I had wrestled with all of this. It didn’t sit right with my soul. I also began to notice fewer and fewer “wrestlers” reaching out for private discussions. I began to notice that I was unsafe for the ones who didn’t understand. That horrified me. I became unsafe for the very people whose hearts I wanted to move. As one of my closest friends in life said, “the shift in the style of advocacy that was rewarded in trans circles became a resounding gong to those who were lovingly trying to understand.”

I began to really ponder, “what am I actually accomplishing here?” So, I began to push back. Push back against the counterproductive rhetoric and the urge to condemn anything less than full affirmation. Push back against the fundamentalist echo chamber in which I had found myself. This had understandably been viewed by some as “betrayal”. And perhaps it was. I had claimed I was “one of them” for over a year. They trusted me. But I couldn’t unsee what I was seeing. I couldn’t quiet that still, small voice. The reaction wasn’t terribly dissimilar to that which was experienced as a young person escaping religious fundamentalism. It was the same feeling of betrayal that undoubtedly led one former schoolmate from my fundamentalist childhood to call me a “baby killer” after finding out I joined the Army.

I don’t blame people for how they feel, but I was committed to returning to who I was in the “early days”. Who I truly was created to be. I was committed to recentering my identity in Christ crucified, not my transness. Being trans, or being queer, they are not what makes me special. I began to see this. I began to believe this. I began to be freed from the prison of the idolatry of identity. And I began to identify less and less with my own community, at least in how I presented my profile to the world. Not out of shame for who I am, but out of a need to be a witness to the only identity that I truly cherished. My identity as a follower of Christ.

So, I had publicly announced that I was done with trans activism. Not because I do not believe in trans rights, access to gender-affirming care, etc. I had to get away from the toxicity, as I had seen it. In hindsight, I should have been clearer and more gracious as to the exact reasons behind this shift. Activism was not for me, and I began to stumble repeatedly. That transition period was a challenge, as I began to voice things that were considered anathema to the progressive fundamentalist world I was in, while still being close with many of them that I had considered friends at the time.

Now, my lil’ sis, Hannah-Kate told me the other day, that I have a tendency to communicate in a way that makes it sound as if my statements are prescriptive to others, as opposed to just being descriptive of where I am. She so astutely pointed out that most people don’t understand that my tweets are really more a thinking aloud for myself (this blog included). I began to talk of grace, especially grace for those who don’t understand or affirm us. But I had failed to show grace for the growing crowd of those who were angry about all my talk of grace.

Grace…it’s such a central word to my life. Literally. It’s my middle name, and I chose it for a very real reason. It was to serve as a reminder of the importance and centrality of God’s grace in my life. It was to serve as a reminder to keep “grace” central to who I am. I had stumbled, as I am oft to do. I would hear accusations that I demanded grace for “our oppressors”. Well, yeah. That’s the whole point of grace. It’s what Christ modeled for us as He was nailed to a tree. That’s what makes it hard, and that’s why we all fail at it so often.

So that is the recentering I am pursuing this Lenten season. Or maybe it isn’t even a recentering. It may just be a new center because I am a different person than I was in 2020. A new center that is a result of the scrapes and bruises that come from growth. A focus on grace. A focus on the cross, not self. Satan tempted Christ with all the political power of the world. Christ focused on the cross. Satan tempted Christ repeatedly, and in that wilderness, Christ kept His focus on the cross. So that’s where I am as we approach Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. I will head into the "wilderness" with the hope that I will keep my eyes on the grace of the cross. Yes, I will be fasting from Twitter, but Lent isn’t just about fasting. Lent is a time to reflect, repent, brush away distractions, and stand firm against temptations. I believe it’s also a time to look forward to Holy Week and to the cross that stands upon Golgotha. To look to the immeasurable grace of a God who died so we might live.

It's His will I seek. It’s His way, that third way, that I believe is better. It’s what I long for upon the end of this season. To seek the tense middle of messy, painful relationship and possible rejection. To seek that which makes for peace. It is a harder way, but it is a better way. It is the only way that leads to life.