Living Life Between Two Worlds: The Story of A Transsexual Experience, the truth God revealed about it, and how He brought me out of it

By Mike Jolls

Living Life Between Two Worlds is a book that attempts to address, from a Christian perspective, the highly visible topic of transsexuality (regarding people who change their sex). This topic has permeated our society, affecting business, commerce, our military, our educational system, legal and moral viewpoints on human sexuality and marriage, bathroom usage policies, and beyond. Given its impact, how should Christians and the Church approach this issue? Living Life Between Two Worlds was written to bring God's truth about this subject into the light so that Christians can have a resource they can turn to for answers. It is also written to give hope to those that struggle with the problem, so they can know that there is freedom through God. It tells the unique story of the author, who because of life circumstances and experiences, lived with the turmoil and emotional pain of transsexuality for over 30 years. Not only that, but it testifies about the miraculous power of God, how God divinely visited the author and revealed the truth about transsexuality, and then how God powerfully brought the author out of bondage and into freedom and peace through that deliverance experience. However, Living Life Between Two Worlds does not stop there. It tells the truth about human sexuality and challenges the theories that support transsexuality. It presents scriptures telling God's opinion on the subject. It tells how a conflicted person can combat transsexuality. It discusses the spiritual aspect of transsexuality. It tells how the Church can approach the subject in love. In short, this book attempts to be a guide about this topic from God's viewpoint with the hope that the truth contained within its pages will touch and change the lives of those suffering from the conflict, just as it changed the author's life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644586181

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Living Life Between Two Worlds

The Story of A Transsexual Experience, the truth God revealed about it, and how He brought me out of it

Mike Jolls

Copyright © 2019 by Mike Jolls

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

To God, who set me free, gave me ultimate peace, and set my feet upon the task to write this book.

To my wife, Linda, who has shown me unconditional love throughout the process of writing this book.

To Diane Kelley, the first person I told about what God did for me and who encouraged me to tell my story.

To Matt Toupin and John Childers, the two pastors who helped review this book and gave me guidance about its content.

Introduction

If you’ve picked up this book, you may have done so with a curiosity about the title and subject matter of this book. The subject of transsexuality (people changing their sex) is something that is not, in this author’s experience, widely discussed in Christian circles. While this subject is certainly one that is very visible in our society today and one that would probably be considered sinful by many Christians, you probably won’t see very many books in your local Christian bookstore on this subject. With that being the case, you might ask yourself why write such a book on a subject that Christians aren’t talking or reading about?

The condition of transsexuality, like homosexuality, is growing more widespread and accepted in our society today. In the content that you will find in other books or on websites on the Internet about the subject of transsexuality, there are many accounts of people who found their true self by changing their sex. These stories tell about the person’s struggle and their resolution of living a new life in the gender of their choice. This material often says that transsexuality is simply another form on the scale of gender fluidity (i.e., another way to say that there are many forms of sex besides the binary forms of true male and female). You often hear that this behavior of changing sex is normal, and that society should be accepting and tolerant. This is a human viewpoint, which, if embraced, allows the individual to live their life and sexual expression without being judged by the society at large. To this goal, legislation has been introduced by the Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgendered (LGBT) lobby and passed by our government, which makes it a hate crime to speak out negatively about people who follow this lifestyle.

What you don’t see in these sources is what God thinks about such behavior. Many websites that you find on the internet will claim that God has no opinion on this topic because the word transsexual or an equivalent word never appears in the Bible. The authors of these web resources conclude that transsexuality is therefore a nonissue, acceptable, and not sinful in God’s eyes. While the specific word transsexual does not appear in the Bible, this does not mean that God has no opinion on this subject, or the topic of sex in general. We can read the pages of the Bible to find God’s opinion on these matters. How was man created? What purpose or standard, if any, was set for human sexuality? What is God’s opinion about people that follow sexual practices outside of the standards that He set? If we read His Bible, we find that God does have an opinion on this topic. This opinion may be somewhat indirect and you have to do a bit of digging to find it, but it is there. As Christians, it is important for us to be informed about God’s opinion on this topic despite what today’s sources tell us.

You could conclude from this last paragraph (and you would be correct) that this book has been written to discuss the topic of transsexuality and God’s opinion on the matter as found in the pages of the Bible. However, this book goes beyond being simply a clinical discussion about God’s opinion of the issue. It also tells the story of my personal conflict and struggle with the problem. It tells the reasons and factors that caused it to be a problem for me. It also testifies of my experience with an awesome God who directly came to me and acted to change my life, and how His power and truth brought me out from and set me free from the bondage and torment I lived through.

This was not an easy book to write. Even though encountering God’s liberating power was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced, it would have been easy to simply be content with the fact that I was finally at peace with myself after what God did for me and not expose myself to public scrutiny. However, God would not leave me alone about this. He had a purpose for setting me free from the bondage I had been in. He wanted His message told about what He did for me and what He thinks of this subject. He also wanted it told that He has power over this and that He can bring people out of this and give them peace with themselves. This is different from what you hear on the public airways, namely that the way to find peace with yourself when you are dealing with this is to seek medical transition and become the other sex. There are several testimonies that I have seen from people who have been brought out of homosexuality because of God’s intervention, but I have not seen many that speak about transsexuality. After setting me free, God wanted His story (and mine) told. This book is written to tell about how He can set the person free from this condition. And trust me; it’s great to be free and at peace after so many years in slavery to it. I give God all the credit for my freedom and peace. This was something I could not accomplish by myself.

And so, this book was written to shine a light in the darkness to show that God offers the way out from this problem and that this behavior is not something He condones. He wanted me to tell you through my story that changing sex is not the answer for someone who feels conflicted about who and what they are. Beyond my testimony, other topics included are how a person emotionally reaches the point where they consider the transsexual path, how the individual can combat the problem, and the position that I believe the Church should have regarding the issue. Also, that the problem is a matter of spiritual warfare and not simply a clinical medical matter with an inevitable outcome.

To the person (whether they consider themselves Christian or a non-Christian) who reads this book and who is struggling with this, this is a testimony of God’s power so that you can know that there is hope and freedom through God. And make no mistake; although there are many arguments in this book about why transsexuality is against God, these words are written with a spirit of love toward those who are suffering with this condition in order to show them that there is a way out. I experienced this personally. I understand the raging feelings. While showing the truth about what God has to say about this, I have tried to write these words with love, compassion, and empathy at the same time so that anybody who suffers with this also understands that there is hope and a way of escape. As it says in Ephesians 4:15.

But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: (Eph 4:15 KJV)

And to the Christian who does not have this problem and is reading this, this book is written to give you truth and understanding about the condition, and why a person would consider such a path for their life. Hopefully, it gives you arguments that you can present to an individual you might encounter who is struggling with this, so that they can see God’s viewpoint and realize that there is a way out of this problem and a way to peace and freedom.

My prayer in writing this book is to try and help others realize that God can set them free from a condition which causes the person to hate their natural sex. On the one hand, they were created to be male or female, but in their mind, there is a conflict because they think they should be the other sex. They think they know the answer. They think they know what they need to do to find peace. The answer, however, is not to have to go through the turmoil that is associated with the problem. The answer is to find peace with yourself by finding what God says and experiencing the peace and freedom that only He can offer. As you will see, this is a conflict that rages in the mind and it causes great turmoil. So read on if you dare and find out about a life in two worlds that was ultimately brought to peace through God. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

1

Genesis

To begin relating my journey, let’s begin back at my genesis. I was born in the late 1950s, probably just another baby boy to the staff in the hospital where my mother gave birth to me. If I were to venture to guess, I’d say my parents likely had great expectations for me. They probably wondered, like many parents before them, what their child’s life would be like and what role their child would play in the world. I’m sure that neither of them would have expected that I would one day be writing a book about a transsexual life experience, one that causes the individual to question their own sexuality. No. I’m sure they wouldn’t have expected that. Rather, they would have expected a normal, happy life for their child. But as you will see as you continue reading, this was not the road that I would ultimately travel. I had a different destiny.

During my formative years, I grew up in a female family. It didn’t start out that way, but that’s how it eventually evolved. I’m not sure why my mom and dad got married, but they did. He was a musician, and she just wanted to be a mom raising her children. One day, my dad realized that what he really wanted to do was to go back to school to study engineering. So, he began his studies to make that a reality. For those of you who have studied or know anything about engineering, you know how demanding that curriculum is. In the course of my own college experience, I’ve taken a few pre-engineering classes, and I can tell you that even these courses demanded a lot of time and discipline. Because of that, I can understand when my mother has told me that taking all the courses required for my father’s studies put a tremendous stress on my parent’s relationship. I know that there would have been many days where he just wouldn’t be there because he was reading his books, studying, attending classes, because the curriculum just required that level of dedication from any student. And because he wasn’t there with the family, I know this dynamic would have put a lot of stress on the family structure. I’m certain that over time, the stresses of this regimen became too much for the relationship. Eventually, my mom and dad divorced when I was around two years old. My mom and I moved back to where she called home, so it was just the two of us back in those days plus my mom’s sister and my grandmother (my mom’s mother) who lived nearby. That made it just me and the girls, so to speak.

One of the gifts that I was blessed with upon my arrival into this world (I’m speaking with a great deal of sarcasm just so you understand) was a severe vision disability. It was just a freak occurrence and the luck of the draw; a pretty rotten bargain if you ask me. But hey, someone has to get lucky, right? Basically, my eyes were so severely damaged before I was ever born that I am considered legally blind by vision professionals. I’m not totally blind, and I can see. However, due to a birth defect, I’m very severely nearsighted. In order to help you understand what this means, I have to be extremely close to see what a normal person sees at a normal distance. My vision is rated at 20/200. This means I have to be twenty feet away to see what a normal person could see at two hundred feet. My vision is bad enough so that I can’t easily do, or can’t do altogether, a lot of things that everybody else just takes for granted. It also means since I don’t see things as well, it can take me longer to physically see an object, process the information, and react to it.

Consider sitting in a classroom and the teacher is writing on the blackboard. With just my eyesight, I’m likely not going to be able to read what is written on the blackboard in a normal writing style. I would be able to see that there are chalk marks on the board, but for my eyes to magnify the image sufficiently and read it at a normal distance is beyond my eye’s ability. And that’s even when I’m sitting on the front row. To read a person’s normal handwriting on the board with just my unaided vision (no magnifying devices to help me), I’d have to be just a few inches away from the board to be able to read what is written on it. Needless to say, being in a classroom situation and having to read the board is difficult at best, if not impossible.

Or consider reading a book. A person with normal vision would sit comfortably and hold the book about twenty inches away from their eyes to read the print. I’m so nearsighted that I have to hold the book about two inches away from my face to read it. Plus, I am a very slow reader. My eyes only allow me to read about half as fast as the normal person. In other words, it takes me twice as long as a normal person to read a regular print book. You can then imagine how painful a process it would be to read a book. You can also imagine the looks and stares I get from normally sighted people when they see me read something in public. Since I have vision and since I don’t exhibit any of the mannerisms you might expect from a totally blind person, people assume I am a normal person. But when they see me read something at the close distance I require, what they see is something they don’t expect. In other words, they’re surprised. What this means is that because of my vision, I get noticed.

Or consider trying to play a sport such as softball or baseball with the vision I have. My vision is so poor that if I was standing in the outfield and someone threw the ball to me, I wouldn’t be able to tell where the ball was until it was almost on top of me. As a result, I can’t even play catch easily. I’m sure you can understand that as a result, sports activities were not something I could participate in.

Having described my vision (or lack of it), you can probably understand that for me, growing up wasn’t easy. There were numerous challenges that I faced, and they weren’t easy because everything in our world is based on being able to see normally. Being a male and having a problem such as mine made me feel left out of the picture. Just imagine you can’t ride a bicycle because you can’t see things far enough away to safely perform the activity. Or imagine you can’t play sports (football, baseball, hockey, soccer, volleyball, anything) because the ball is either too small and gets to you before you can see it coming, or you can’t judge where it is in space because you don’t have normal depth perception. Those are activities that kids normally get involved in, but it didn’t take me long to realize that I simply couldn’t do them. It also didn’t take long for the neighborhood kids or the kids I interacted with wherever I was to realize this either. I don’t think kids mean to be cruel, but when you can’t help them play and win, they just realize you can’t do those things they are interested in and they ignore and exclude you. After all, kids want winners, and if you can’t help them achieve that, you’re often picked last or excluded altogether. This resulted in making me feel very isolated and unwanted by my male peers. Although my mother did everything she could to do things with me and make me feel loved, I was a lonely kid and at times, emotionally starved for friendship.

Even at a young age (probably around age six), I experienced this isolation from my male peers. Since a child normally wants someone to play and socialize with, and because my male peers excluded me even at that young age, I played with girls for a short time. That is, until the parents of these girls must have thought it was strange for boys to play with girls at that age and (I’m assuming here) made the girls promptly break things off. Like most kids, I had by that time already noticed that there were differences between girls and boys, and I noticed that girls were prettier than boys. This should not be surprising. It’s a normal observation, and I don’t think I would have given this a second thought had I been accepted by my male peers, or if I had had the benefit of a father to guide and show me what it meant to be a son. However, I didn’t have either of these things that most male children normally have. As I recall, I don’t think I wanted to be a girl at this age. But one thing I did know even at that young age was that boys ignored me for the most part, whereas girls had played with me. It hurt to be rejected by my peers. I felt that I was accepted more by the girls. That led me to wonder very briefly what it would have been like to have been a girl, to have been in their world. Would I have been more accepted and would my life have been better or easier? Would I have been happier? It’s probably difficult for most people to understand how someone could have these thoughts at such young age. But when you’re rejected, you wonder why you have to be the one that experiences what I was dealing with. Why can’t you just be like everyone else? Why does life have to be unfair? And you wonder how things could have been better. At this point in my life, these thoughts of what it might be to be the opposite sex only briefly crossed my mind. The thoughts were simply out of curiosity.

I eventually reached the age where I was going to enter elementary school. As I have already related, I didn’t have the vision to see the blackboard at a normal distance in a classroom. Everything would have simply been too small and unreadable at the distance where a normally sighted child would function, and my vision disability was so severe that eye doctors couldn’t correct my vision with a normal pair of glasses. In fact, I have seen many eye doctors who marvel that I can even see at all, given the level of damage that exists in my eyes. My mother had realized the implications of all of this and enrolled me in a state school for the blind, which educated totally blind and severely legally blind (visually impaired is the politically correct term these days) children. The next five to six years would be an important milestone in my journey of isolation because the experience would show me how cruel boys can be to other boys. In that school, I met a young boy, who for some reason decided that I was going to be his target of punishment. At almost every opportunity, he would beat me up, bite me, or would incite the other children in our class to collectively gang up on me and beat me up.

I can recall one year in the 1960s (I believe it was when I was in third grade) when he had written the word nigger on a piece of paper and put it in my desk, then convinced the other children (especially the black boys) that I had done this. The 1960s, of course, was a decade of racial unrest with blacks, and this event did nothing but incite them. There were many times that I would go in the bathroom or out on the playground and get jumped and gang tackled and then the beating would ensue. I was always fearful of when an attack was coming. I was not a big child, nor did I participate in sports. Because of that, I couldn’t