ROOTED RENEGADE

When I was pregnant with two of my children I knew what gender they were before the doctors told me. I had a knowing deep within, which I know understand to be the Holy Spirit giving me word of knowledge. I am sharing this because it is important in understanding how identity, gender confusion and rejection enter the womb by way of family, friends, doctors, and sometimes the mother when that knowing creates disappointment or confusion. I will say that I myself was not at all disappointed in the genders of my children. I had asked for a boy first, then a girl. I had always wanted my first child to be the protector of my second, the big brother of his little sister. So when I found out I was having a boy I was elated. Many, many families who have patriarchal heads that are still in operation that carry down the generational blessing want the male in the family to come first with regards to the children. The male carries on the family name. While I didn’t have this in my family that I was aware of, at least on my side, I was still happy that I would have a boy (although if it was a girl, I would have been just as happy).

Family legacies are peculiar if you ask me. Many of them are traditionally dated and so set in regulations and rules that they become ritualistic and barbaric in nature. However, some are so beautiful and loving that you can’t help but hope yours would get right and have some of the same. I often wonder where the happy medium is to it here on Earth, because I know it exists in Heaven. We have a royal identity. We carry a royal family legacy. We have a gender that we are each born with for a reason, a purpose, it is why God chose us a male or female. We each come to a family lineage on purpose and from a family lineage. We are all created in THE IMAGE of a Triune God (The Father, Son and Holy Spirit – Genesis 1:26-27) and it does not matter how many times you change your “gender disposition or identity” you were still made in their image and likeness. You cannot escape it – spoiler alert!

Here’s the deal and this is where many are really missing the point of it all. The real – starts in the womb. When a woman is pregnant she dreams of what the child’s gender may be. She flips through social media (used to be magazines, cause ya girl here didn’t have a phone with internet when I had my first child). She watches TikTok, Instagram, looks on Pinterest and Facebook (and wherever else) for all these cute baby snaps and ideas on what it is going to be like. Will the baby have a lot of hair, no hair, big eyes, little eyes, what will their face look like, will there be more than one, etc. There is information overload when it comes to being pregnant (and otherwise). Then the idea’s from family start. I say idea’s because families and friends start with the notions such as: “Well we only have boys in this family so I hope you are having a boy!” (I heard that one). Or one of my fav’s: “You know if you have a girl, I don’t know what we are going to do!”. How about this one: “You better not have twins, you guys can’t afford that! Who is going to take care of twins? It won’t be me and your daddy!”. Wait one more: “You know, you guys really don’t need kids right now, so how about you just go on down to that clinic and take care of that and no one will have to know about it? You will be alright and you will get over it in no time.” (Heard that one too). Friends start too, especially when the couple is not married yet, or they are young. In the name of being supportive, friends will tell them how broke they are to be having kids and how wrong they are for having another child with not enough income. On the other hand, they will go so far as to make the woman feel ashamed for getting pregnant and not using protection – thereby reducing the woman’s feelings about being pregnant altogether which allows shame and guilt to enter in the womb as well.

You see, from the womb, babies are rejected, mislabeled, misidentified, and misgendered, by family, friends and doctors, before the mother has a chance to grasp the concept of being pregnant. Pregnancy is the most beautiful gift God bestows upon a woman. People don’t realize that what they say quickens in the womb of a growing child. Babies can hear when their ears develop in the womb, so what you say to a pregnant woman matters.

Identity that is created in the image and likeness of the Triune God is rejected by people who might “seem” to be well meaning people, doing what was done to them or what they have done their whole lives, because they themselves are spiritually oppressed. Being spiritually oppressed because they themselves don’t know who they are fully in Christ Jesus, therefore they won’t operate from the context of true identity. They can’t. None of us can if we don’t understand our spiritual inheritance in Christ. If people continue to think that God is gender confused, LGBTQIA+, transgender, pansexual, gender fluid, and the like, then people will continue to struggle with true identity and therefore will project that onto an unborn child (and children who are young as well). I already know how much backlash I will get for this, that’s okay. I have been in the place of identity confusion, because at one point I struggled with being bi-sexual and wanting to marry a woman, and I was married twice to a man and I have kids. So I understand the confusion. I didn’t know my true identity in Christ Jesus, nor was I taught what it was for a very long time. I had to learn.

Dale Mast says “Revelation from God reveals our identity” and it’s true. I needed revelation from God in order to truly understand who I was in Him and to understand the scriptural context behind Genesis 1:26-27. Without the revelation, I was just reading words off a page and the world was telling me how to interpret it. I went left, right, and sideways trying to make it fit to how I was, not the other way around, which is what most people do when they really don’t understand how they fit into the context of scripture and God’s plan. We don’t conform scripture to fit our agenda. Scripture is alive and sharper than any double edged sword, cutting down to the marrow of who we are so that we change – not the other way around (Hebrews 4:12). It is so that we discover our true selves in and through the Word of God. Your identity is anointed supernaturally and has purpose. Otherwise you wouldn’t be made in the image of a Holy Triune God. That image, that likeness, is not perverted or confused by not knowing what gender you are. It is not distorted by sexual immorality or lust over likeness of the same sex. That image and likeness is holy and pure. Our society has perverted it to try and conform it to the unholy standards of today to fit an agenda and mindset that goes against the nature of God.

For years I struggled to understand this. I thought I was unloved and hated by all those who didn’t understand. I was full of heavy shame and guilt because while I knew God and believed in God, before I was delivered, I didn’t know the context of identity. I had lived over half my life struggling with sexuality issues related to bi-sexuality and quite honestly felt conviction, but not enough to cause me to realize that my sin was causing a huge separation with me and God. My bi-sexual encounters started as a child because I had been molested. Then when I was being trafficked, my sin turned into something more perverse which was more warping of identity when I fell in love with a woman and wanted to marry her. I was confused and grossly manipulated by this woman. I didn’t realize at the time I was being used, nor could I see it. I fell in love with an idea of something in the form of someone. My heart was heavy, hurt, hardened, burdened, and so confused. I wanted to be loved and I didn’t want to be injured anymore the way it was happening. But the way I choose wasn’t right either.

Show me every lie I believe about myself that is holding me back and keeping me from moving forward with you and the plans you have for my life to bring you Glory. Whew! This right here! When we ask God to show us the lies we believe about ourselves things begin to happen! I asked and I saw deliverance. I don’t struggle with homosexuality or bi-sexuality anymore and haven’t for years now. I received what I asked the Lord for which was healing and deliverance. It came with new a new mindset about scripture and has come with years of getting to know who I am in Christ Jesus and how I am loved. You see GOD NEVER STOPPED LOVING ME DURING MY PROCESS! GOD NEVER STOPPED LOVING ME WHILE I STRUGGLED TO FIND HIM IN MY MESS. GOD NEVER STOPPED LOVING ME WHILE I SEARCHED FOR HIM. GOD NEVER STOPPED LOVING ME WHILE I WALKED OUT MY SALVATION WITH FEAR AND TREMBLING. GOD NEVER STOPPED LOVING ME WHILE I SOUGHT HIS FACE FOR ANSWERS AND I PRESSED INTO HIM!

One thing HE DID NOT LOVE WAS MY SIN. So let me clarify something here for those who want to argue that God accepts the sin because He makes clear in His Word that He does not. People can try to argue that all they want, but it is an empty and vain argument. He loves you. He doesn’t love His Word being twisted to fit an agenda that pushes homosexuality or gender confusion. He loves you. His child. His image bearer. He does not love it when His children twists His commandments and then uses that perverseness to sin and call it His Word as justification. He made you. He doesn’t hate His creation. He hates sin.

The choice was mine to cast off all sin and the entanglement related to rejection, shame, guilt and condemnation because that was eating me up inside for years. It obviously was not my fault what happened to me as a child nor being trafficked, but I carried the rejection, shame, guilt and condemnation around with me like it was all my fault (and so many other layers of emotions). In order to really be free, you have to deal with the things that easily entangle you – sometimes in layers. Some people say it happens all at once for them – I was not one of those people. It has happened in layers for me. I had a process to work out my sanctification with the Lord and the Holy Spirit has had to guide me through it. He will do the same for you – you just have to be willing to start. One small step in the right direction is a step.

“When God created you, He chose the time and place you were born. Without Him, the greatness that is buried inside of you won’t come out and too fruition, it will be limited. So what were you created for?” Dale Mast

I leave you with this last question from Dale Mast above and my own words of encouragement…

I didn’t have many people who knew too much about what I struggled with growing up. I believe if they did they most likely would not have accepted me and helped me during my struggle with identity confusion and sexuality confusion. I struggled with demonic oppression and sin. I struggled because there were words spoken over me as a child from my parents when I was in the womb and as I got older that were curses against my life. I was not affirmed as a child. I was labeled, misidentified, rejected, abandoned and much more. There was one thing that I did, I fought. I fought back against the oppression. I fought back against all the negative influences in my life. I fought back to not be who people said I was and I fought to find the truth. I knew there was something that was for me and I wanted to know what that was. What do you know deep inside that is contradictory to what you living on the outside? You know. It is deep within you and it is direct opposition to the way you are living. Maybe you don’t understand it, but you feel it. I didn’t, but I knew it was good and pure and my spirit recognized it, even if my soul didn’t. Don’t ignore what your spirit is telling you and find a Holy Spirit filled church to get into that will help you connect with the Word of God so that you can start the process of transformation.

You are not rejected. You are not abandoned. You are not alone.

You can change and live different than you are living now but it will mean changing a lifestyle that you are accustom to and the world so easily accepts. You will have to reframe your world and reframe your thinking. It won’t be easy but you will be loved through the process.

Let me be the first also say, I am sorry that there have been people who have rejected you and pushed you away because you seem different to them. We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). Sometimes people forget that. I pray that you turn away and know that you are loved as a person and there is always a way to walk away and have an eternal future.

Faythe