Spiritual Points from a Fast

During my most recent fast undertaken for the sake of our brothers and sisters who struggle with GID, my stake, as well as the rest in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico had a stake conference consisting of a Sunday broadcast from church general authorities. Having been fasting, and considering the subject of the fasting, I was overly receptive to the Spirit and wanted to share a few points, in no particular order from the conference. I will divide these among multiple posts so that one thread does not become too bogged down with conversation and so I needn't write an exceedingly long post before getting everyone thinking.


1) Challenges provide us with defining moments. How will we allow challenges to define the remainder of our lives?

We as people with GID, have a very specific type of challenge, and certainly one that will test our mettle as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With the little revealed doctrine, largely Spirit-directed local brethren making decisions concerning us, and the only known "cure" being largely misunderstood and perhaps even detrimental to some of us, it can certainly seem like a real walk of faith. I myself have had these defining moments. After having transitioned successfully for nearly 2 years and after a lifetime of longing, the Lord gave me an opportunity, through a meeting with one of these bewildered church local authorities, to either follow His counsel given through this bishop, or to show that I will walk in my own paths. I chose the former, and so made a choice that would define my faith as well as the direction I would take the rest of my life. I've been called strong before, but I do not know if it is as much strength as much as it is practice. I had practiced, previous to that time, for years, dedicatedly following the Lord and the counsel of the brethren. In fact, I only left the church when I felt there was no personal revelation opposing it. So, once I again received personal revelation, I was still in practice of doing as the Lord commanded me. That doesn't mean it was easy, but I had prepared myself before having to make such a difficult choice of consistently choosing the Lord, which made the decision to follow Him once again far more appealing.


2) Job did not turn against God. Despite our afflictions we must not "curse God and die."

"You are not yet as Job." This trite phrase tends to offer little in the way of comfort to me personally, though I do understand the point. We can only understand suffering to the capacity to which we have suffered with only limited glimpses of suffering beyond our experiences. However we can still place ourselves in the place of Job in his story, believing our temptations and sufferings to be beyond that of others, perhaps even the worst they can be. Being able to do this should allow us to look at what Job did. Despite his afflictions and counsel from his family and friends, Job decided he would not curse God, or as I like to see it, blame God maliciously. So even if we are as Job, shouldn't we realize that by following his example, we too will receive more than we can imagine if we will remain faithful to the Lord. I know for many of us, the pressures seem overwhelming to "curse God and die" and in fact many of those in our situation have. The wonder of it is, would have it not been better, regardless of what decision you make concerning how you deal with your condition, to keep the Lord in your life? At least then you retain the potential companionship of the Holy Ghost to direct you on your paths.


3) Peace only comes to us when we can see the complete plan of God. We should focus more on spiritual things than temporal things.

Truly this is an important point for us as individuals we GID we tend to be overly focused on temporal things. Our GID disrupts daily normal living and can cause us consistent pain. We know however, at least intellectually that focusing on hope, on our Savior, serving others, and the Gospel plan will help to act as a buffer against those specific pains we feel, we still have a great tendency to ignore them in favor of a way to stop the pain here and now. While temporal things are very important, they are not the only important thing, and as we spend more and more time focused on the temporal things of the world and less on the spiritual things, we will become weakened to fight against our ailments and come more and more to rely on the 'arm of the flesh' - a state that we should seek to avoid if we will ever truly be able to combat our condition. What does it mean to focus on spiritual things? Keeping up with those spiritual activities the prophets have encouraged us to do for years and years - prayer, regular church attendance, paying tithing, fasting, attending the temple and fulfilling the three fold mission of the church, and very importantly, service! Devoting time to these things will certainly give us an opportunity to be more open to the spirit of the Lord and show Him our devotion to allowing Him to help us carry our burdens so we needn't rely upon only ourselves - a path that will assuredly fail.


4) We must not worship idols.

To those who have been a part of the TS community at large can see the idol worship so common among us with GID. We worship at the altar of transsexualism before the great idol of our other-sexed image - a version of self worship. This transsexual religion has a hell, and it is staying our birth sex with the dysphoria that brings, so we turn our eyes and our hearts to the almighty image of ourselves as the other sex, and sacrifice much to its name. Now I am not saying that transition is wrong or couldn't be a needed correction for some, but I am saying that we must not become overly focused on self worship. We must keep our perspective as Latter-day saints. Remember who the true giver of peace is - not the surgeon, but our Savior - not the hormones, but the Atonement. These things bring true happiness in this world and in the next. Regardless of what actions we take to relieve our symptoms of GID, we must keep our perspective on the Savior and the Gospel plan so that we can be assured we are drawing our strength from a source that will not fail us.

More points to come.