289 How to Navigate Gender Identity Issues with Faith and Love
Episode Summary: In this episode, author, speaker, and mother, Jodi Howe, shares the painful wounds she has gone through as she has parented a child with gender identity issues. She shares the wisdom that God has granted her in how to remain true to the gospel of Jesus Christ, but still love her daughter. Quotables from the episode: Often God uses our most painful experiences to minister to others. The ultimate way to glorify the Lord is to turn our pain into power. My testimonies come from experience with anxiety, divorce, and having a transgender child. But He equips, He leads, He walks alongside us, and I’m at the point now where I’m speaking from a healed scar, not a wound. I’ve gone through years of learning, growing, messing up, and trying to stay close to my faith in Christ and love my daughter through this. The thorn in my flesh came about ten years ago when my daughter told me she doesn’t like the skin that she is in and wants to transition into a male. I firmly believe that God does not mistakes and that the gender you are born in is the gender you are to live in. But that doesn’t mean that our children and the culture they live in don’t feel lost in who they are. In the course of a decade, not much has changed in her decision, but what has changed is how I approach it as a mom who is adamantly and passionately in love with Jesus Christ and is adamantly and passionately in love with my child. The Lord has shown me that I need to be open to what an agape love looks like, not just the love a mother to a child, but His love as spelled out in First Corinthians. God has shown me such incredible growth in this process. Gender identity issues is not being born in the wrong skin. This is actual societal pressure, infused by the internet, put upon lonely hearts and minds that are struggling just to get by at the times when they are the most vulnerable and the affirmations by doctors, therapists, teachers and educators who say if you want to be a duck, and act like a duck, we’re going to help you be a duck. Satan, through society, is really putting a stronghold on those vulnerabilities. But the good news is, God is prevailing through it as I knew He would, in my life, in my family’s life, and in my child’s life. You grow in Christ as fast as you are intentional about growing. I have been intentional from the day I accepted Jesus into my heart that I was going to build a life and a foundation on who He is, on His foundation. I am going to build my life around Him. These children are told that if your parents won’t let you be who you want to be, you need to threaten suicide or even attempt it so they will get on your bandwagon of transitional change in your body. 90% of transgender men and women are coming from a traumatic circumstance. It’s crucial to thoroughly vet the mental health therapists you go to for therapy. We don’t have agree or like the choices of our children. But when God says “love the Lord with all your strength, heart and soul, and love thy neighbor,” when we appreciate how much he loved us to send Jesus to die for our sins, we don’t get to love haphazardly—it is a full love of acceptance. What it has shown me is that I can love her alongside the struggles and the choices she has made. It has softened my heart to not feel as much shame, to not feel as much resentment, to not worry what people think of me…when I go to bed at night, I only care what God thinks of me. I believe that our omniscient God is going to be able to weave this into something beautiful. I know the Lord would want me to have a relationship with my child no matter what. I adore my child, and she is going to see how I, her mother who loves the Lord, is going to honor her. So there is going to be a lot of pressure on me to keep my Godly heart in check, and I’m willing to do it for the sake of my child, and most importantly, to glorify the Lord. You can stay a beautiful believer in Jesus Christ, b
