Gifts From God

We don’t always understand why something God does for us is a gift. Sometimes God does something to us that seems painful; it seems like rejection. Yet it is a gift. The relationship I have with the minister of my childhood church seems very paradoxical, yet it is a gift from God. Probably most of the people I know would read about this and wonder why I have anything to do with this minister or this church. I went to this church throughout my childhood and adolescence. This past January, just after I’d turned 52, I saw an article in the local newspaper. The church was starting a rock and roll Saturday evening service with a band. The intention was to attract people who did not go to church regularly, if at all. It worked for me, and I braved the snow to get there. My minister played the guitar and sang in the band. He is the same minister who visits my mother in the nursing home. He is the minister who talked at my dad’s funeral. I loved the service immediately. I was thrilled to death. I had a church again. I would have a place to go every Saturday night, to sing, to pray, to hear scripture readings, to hear a sermon. I thanked God for this gift.

But the following Saturday at church, God presented me with a gift I would rather not have ever unwrapped. In the program was a homophobic passage criticizing homosexuals, Democrats, liberals, and Ted Kennedy and stating that they all wanted to ban the Bible. I was very hurt and angry, and didn’t know where to turn. How could they tell the newspaper that their service was open to all and that they were seeking to offer a home to those of us who did not attend church regularly? That home obviously was only for conservative Republicans. Gay people, Democrats, and liberals were not welcome. How was I to handle this?

I am so glad I decided to accept this as God’s gift to me. I decided that, as a Christian, I should not reject this gift with anger, but should accept it with love. I decided God did not want me to attack my minister, so I started to talk about my feelings on the internet. God sent the gifts of many different people who supported me. I made many new friends from my posts.

Then, God sent another minister to me as a gift. One particular minister had compassion for me and literally rescued me out of cyberspace. She knew exactly what to do to help me. She sent me an e-mail which stood out above everyone else’s, even though it was very short. Then she sent some letters to other people about me. One of them was a woman minister from Sixth Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. This woman--who is also a gift from god, incidentally—wrote to me and invited me to Sixth Presbyterian. I took her up on the invitation, and I’ve been there ever since. I never would have gone to Sixth Presbyterian on my own if the initial minister had not gone to all this trouble.

Anyway, I wanted to find out who this woman was who had helped me. Well, it turned out that she was a transgender minister. Since I had gone through a transition from male to female with a close friend of mine years before, I felt very emotional over this. I read this minister’s story, and I was very impressed with it and became very emotional about it. So I decided I wanted to meet a lot of transgender people, and I started doing that. Now, I have met many new friends. This has been a totally positive experience for me. I also went to a TransFamily of Cleveland meeting. My two best friends to come out of this experience are Valerie and JimmieLee. Valerie is not her real name, since she’s in the closet. JimmieLee is very public, so that’s her real name.

Every time I go to Sixth Presbyterian Church, I am so happy to see it up ahead of me. I’m so happy to see the steps, to see the greeters, to see the inside of the church, to see the section I usually sit in and the other people who sit in the same section. I’m so happy to see the minister and to be at the service. I’m so happy after the service when I socialize with the people I’ve met. I’m happy to see the lesbians and gay men there, being accepted for who they are. I’m happy to speak Russian and French with my friend Svetlana, who doesn’t know English very well. I’m happy for all the other diverse friends I have met. I feel so accepted, and feel I can be myself. I really feel I owe all of this to that transgender minister who found me on the internet and did something about my situation. I don’t know where I’d be now without this church.

I am also so happy for my transgender friends. I feel I owe this also to that minister. However, I have the feeling she might be a little nervous that she’s had such an influence on me. But it’s all been for the best. There are so many mornings when I wake up a little depressed, and I’ve received a long e-mail from Valerie. This e-mail is what helps me cheer up and make it through the day. There are evenings out here in the boondocks when I feel so lonely. Then I get online and JimmieLee IMs me and we chat for awhile, and I don’t feel lonely anymore. Valerie has told me that she is so happy she met me and she values my friendship and needs me. Sometimes, I know I cheer her up when she is depressed about having to be in the closet about the fact that she is a woman in a man’s body. JimmieLee says she values my friendship and that it really helps her when she is at the fire station with other people who harass her and refer to her as "he" and "him" just to annoy her. It helps to talk to me.

This is why I think this transgender minister is truly a very good and positive gift from God to me, and my other transgender friends and especially Valerie and JimmieLee are beautiful gifts from God to me. This shows the strange way in which sometimes God works and blesses us.

However, my conservative minister is also a gift to me from God. I still go to the service at his church every Saturday night. Nothing too offensive has been said since the homophobic paragraph in the bulletin. This minister has a gift from God for music, and he has attracted other gifted musicians around him. I also have the gift of being able to sing. This minister, however, is extremely conservative. I’m sure he believes gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people are all going to Hell. He probably thinks Democrats and liberals are also going there. But he is a very sweet, loving person too. I went to the church on Palm Sunday evening to see "The Passion of the Christ." He was extremely concerned about me, knowing how emotional I am. He made them give me 20 kleenexes! Then he kept looking back at me to make sure I was okay. So I think God is trying to tell me that in his way, he is a gift to me too. After all, it’s the homophobic things that were said which caused me to meet the transgender minister and then to go to Sixth Presbyterian and also to meet all my transgender friends! So God does have this way of giving the "wrong" gift as well as the right one. Like giving your dad another boring necktie or something like that!

Very early this spring, I was out for a jog out here in the boondocks, over the steep hills that keep me in shape. I was jogging by the farm with the black cows. They had just started giving birth to black calfs. One cute little calf was all black but had a white face. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I stopped and stared at it for a long time. Yesterday, I jogged that same 5 ½-mile route, and at the top of the hill, none of the black cows or calfs were anywhere in sight. There was only one animal there: the little black calf with the white face. There it was all alone, staring at me. At this moment, I KNEW there was a God who loves me, and who has a special gift for me every day. Sometimes the gifts are hard to understand, but usually they are wonderful, beautiful gifts. This gift was so obvious. I was out for my jog, and God decided to make sure my special black calf with the white face was there to greet me, just so I would know He exists and is looking out for me.