Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1088: Transitioning, Detransitioning, and the Gospel: Kyla Gillespie

Episode Date: June 26, 2023

Kyla is a former pro hockey player, who experiences same-sex attraction, lived as a man for several years and then detransitioned back to her birth sex several years ago after meeting Jesus all over again. In this conversation, Kyla shares her story and we discuss how the church can do a better job loving trans people with both truth and grace. Learn more about Kyla by visiting her website: https://kylagillespie.com

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is the one and only Kyla Gillespie, who is from Canada. Kyla has played professional hockey for a number of years, grew up in the church, ended up experiencing same-sex attraction as a teenager and gender dysphoria, transitioned later on in life, and then about six years ago, detransitioned back to her natal sex, a female, and has just a really awesome story, journey, and most of all, just a passionate heart for Jesus Christ, which you will see very clearly in this episode. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Kyla Gillespie.

All right. Hey, Kyla. It's been a minute. It's been like probably two or three years since you're on the podcast, I think, and over a year since you spoke at the first Exiles conference. So anyway, thanks for coming back on Theology in a Raw. Thank you. It's awesome to be here. It's been a little while for sure yeah yeah so um yeah so just so our audience knows like we've done you know a lot of things together we met over email you reached out to me um i want to say about six or seven years ago it was shortly after you or kind of i think you were just detransitioning or shortly after. I mean, you were in a really interesting part of your journey at that time. And here you are six or seven years later.

Yeah, it's been awesome. Obviously challenging. Yeah, I think it was like three, four months into my detransition when I reached out to you all the way from Australia. Right. Got your contact information. And it's been, yeah, such a crazy time right now. Yeah, our mutual friends, Rob and Claire Smith down in Australia, who are just awesome individuals. Shout out to Rob and Claire.

I've been trying to have... Have I had Rob on the podcast? Oh, my word. Maybe I haven't had Rob on. I was actually trying to get Claire on because she's a dynamite New Testament scholar. I read her dissertation, which was like a thick, like page book. And I'm like, I knew she, I knew she was a writer and smart and everything, but I didn't know she was like brilliant, brilliant, you know, like, like, Oh my word, this is crazy. So, well, for people that don't know who you are,

why don't you give a, um, yeah, an overview of your journey, who you are, and where God has brought you today? Sure. So I grew up in Christian Home on Vancouver Island, which is just about a 45-minute ferry ride from downtown Vancouver in Canada. And when I grew up, I mean, my life was pretty normal at a young age. I just remember wanting to play hockey with my cousin and my brother. And so I begged my parents to play. And within about a year or so, I was about five, six years old. And then my parents told me that I had to change in a different dressing room. And for me, that was like, I was probably like, whatever a normal five-year-old would say is like, oh, why? But that was my first recollection of like being different in my gender. So it was a moment that I remember, clearly. And from there, you know, I struggled with same sex attraction going into my teenage years. At about 14, my parents got

divorced. And that was really difficult for me because that changed the whole dynamic of my life and my family. My parents getting divorced and really struggling at youth group and at school with same-sex attraction. All my friends started to be attracted to the opposite sex. But that wasn't the case for me, I was being starting to be attracted to the same sex, my friends. And so I just at that age, I mean, it was the 90s, we didn't really have a conversation around this. So I just suppressed it. I knew that homosexuality was in the Bible. And I had heard like here and there talk about it. I just knew it wasn't good. So I didn't really know how to talk to anyone about it. We didn't have the conversation. So I became a

really angry and hurt teenager. I had to really decide who I wanted to live with at the age of 14. I had to choose my mom or my dad to live full time with. And that was difficult because I really loved them both. And so I made that hard choice and I decided to live with my live full time with. And that was difficult because I really love them both. And so I made that hard choice and I decided to live with my mom full time. That way, that's a that's a decision they put on the kid at 14. Yeah, they asked me who I would want to live with. And for me, that was just so difficult to choose. I felt like, you know, that just put fuel on the fire to this being all my fault. I chose my mom and I lived with her on the school days. About a year and a half, two years, they both started dating and they got remarried.

My mom, she married an unbeliever and my dad married a woman and she had five kids at the time. And so this really changed the dynamic of going to my dad's on weekends. I shared a room with my stepsister and every weekend I would come there and my room would just be smaller and smaller until all I had was a bunch of boxes in the basement with all my belongings and a single bed. And I just felt that I wasn't welcome there. And my dad and I, our relationship started to change and grow apart. In that time, I was really pursuing my hockey and my sports. So at about the age of 18, I wanted to be scouted for the national program. And here I was still wrestling with same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria. We

didn't really have words for it back then or a label or anything. So I just knew that I wrestled with my gender identity. I ended up getting scouted playing hockey in Vancouver about taking the ferry about three, four times a week and getting scouted for the Women's Canadian National Program in Calgary, Alberta. Traveling to Vancouver was my first experience in the LGBTQ plus community. All of a sudden, I met other people older than me that had the same experiences. And that was the first time I was like, whoa, like, I'm like you, I struggle with same sex attraction. And so it just opened my eyes to a whole different world. And then when I moved to Calgary, Alberta, just being so broken at about 1819, I took my first drink of alcohol. My dad and I relationship

had pretty much ended, he said it was easier to start over and that broke my heart. And so I just became an angry teenager, but pursuing my passion in hockey and that became my identity. Is the stereotype somewhat correct? I would imagine women's hockey would have a good number of LGBTQ identifying players is that I mean when you said like you when you start pursuing hockey you were you like that kind of overlap with also getting more involved with LGBTQ people or yeah I mean athletics being labeled a tomboy all my life just puts me in a category or a label that I kind of just embraced at that time. And I think that, you know, not just hockey, but women's sports, we do have a lot of LGBTQ women, basketball or whatever.

But there were quite a few LGBTQ people in all the hockey that I played. Okay, so you're playing now professional. Well, you said you took your first drink and that led to like a major addiction, right? Yeah. And I didn't know what alcoholism was at 19. I just knew that all my life leading up to 19, God had kind of kept me away from, protected me really from alcohol because it was so easy in high school to say no to alcohol. And I didn't really understand that

when I took my first drink at 19, that I would actually be an alcoholic. And if I knew what alcoholism was, I would have known because I blacked out my first time drinking. I just really drank to not be present anymore and not feel and not have that, you know, brokenness that I was carrying with me. Interesting. Wow. So then now you're playing professional hockey, you're kind of disconnected or cut off from your, your dad, but are you now still in contact with your mom? Yeah, my mom and I had a really close relationship. She helped me, you know, like, because at 19, I wasn't really working.

So she helped me with finding a place and providing some food for me. And she was always really close to me in my life, especially at that time. But as she got married, I started to see things change because her and my stepdad drank. It didn't become a problem right away, but there was alcohol involved even in their life. Okay, wow. All right, well, keep going. Yeah, take us forward in your story. Yeah, sure. So at 19, taking my first drink, I was able to suppress all the feelings of, you know, I knew what the Bible said about homosexuality and all these kind of things. But I felt I battled. I read my old journals about maybe three months ago, and I really did fight and battle and pray and ask God

to take these feelings away so that I could follow him. But being away from the church, being cut off from my family, really just being able to be on phone calls and that I stopped going to church. And I gave up at about probably about 21, 23 years old is when I came out as gay. I was just tired of suppressing, tired of fighting. And that's actually when I met somebody that for the first time I was really attracted to and probably fell in love with her. Although it didn't come to anything, I realized, hey, this is real in my life and I don't want to fight it anymore. And so I came out as gay when I was 23. And you were still dealing with gender dysphoria.

Is that right? At the same time? Can you describe what that experience is like? I mean, I know for everybody, it can be kind of different. I hear different descriptions, but sometimes it's hard to even put into words. But for you, what did that experience? Yeah, I was struggling with it. Like I said, at this time, I didn't still didn't have any like label or word for it. I knew that I was a tomboy. I was a masculine gay person, woman. And so I was more on the scale of being that in the community. I just had always been

more masculine in my demeanor and the way that I behaved and acted. And, and so being attracted to more girl, girly girls, as you would say, or whatever, just put me in that category. And so when gender dysphoria started to really make a big impact in my 20s was when I just felt like I was trapped in the wrong body. I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. I felt that really God had made my life where I met other trans people. And then I was able to say, just like when I came out as gay, it took quite a few years of meeting LGBTQ plus people that were struggling. And then the same, I met some trans people and I, for the first time ever, I was like, as they shared their stories, I could relate. It was so like, I had a safe place to talk about it finally. Okay.

And when did you start transitioning and what was that decision like? Is that, um, I can imagine, I don't know, like that it was incredibly difficult to even take those steps, but. Yeah, it was. I remember just being so done. It was being done with alcohol and ruining my life and every relationship and being done fighting gender dysphoria. I remember reaching out, it was probably 2010, an old pastor that pastored me on the island, Ken, an old pastor that pastored me on the island, Vancouver Island, he now lived in Vancouver and really close to me. So I reached out to him and I started to tell him that I was struggling,

that I was depressed, that I was anxious, that my dysphoria had gotten so bad that I felt like I had to transition and I needed to help with my drinking. I really put off transitioning because I knew how much it would break my mom's heart. And that was probably the hardest thing that I had to do was come to terms with, like, I thought at that time, and I don't know, I think it's selfish now is like, well, I can't live like this anymore.

And my mom just has to deal with it. I'm done fighting. And so I remember calling her and my brother and just sharing with them all these things and coming out as trans in 2010, probably about, yeah, I think halfway through the year. And then finally coming into recovery. Okay. Wow. So you took the steps to transition. Physically, was that a euphoric thing? Was it difficult physically or is it a blend of both? Because I've heard both from people. I've heard, well, I mean, anytime for most people, I think, and this is, I guess, a statement in the form of a question.

For most people, taking testosterone in particular, it does have an immediate euphoric feeling for anybody. I played athletics and guys would sneak. They would be shooting up and stuff. And man, they just feel like they can conquer the world. But then there's kind of a little bit shorter or midterm kind of effect where there's just bouts of anger, mood swings, and just like they kind of start feeling not so good. What was that experience like for you in particular, like taking T? Yeah, that time I had a full time job and I was kind of coming out as trans. Taking testosterone, here in Canada, the government pays for transition. And so the

government paid for me to speak to certain physicians and an endocrinologist. And in that, they do blood work and we get assessed where we should go. And the first six months is like 0.5 milliliters of testosterone. So it's very, very little for the first six months. And I remember not really feeling much at all, wanting so bad to feel different and look different. And that was probably a really frustrating time in the transition. It was probably after that six months when he upped my testosterone to over one milligram of testosterone. And then another like probably three to four months before I really started to see differences. All of a sudden I'm working and people are not misgendering me really, but actually thinking that I'm male.

And then I started to see a difference. I wouldn't say like any facial hair or any voice change happened within the first year. It would take quite a few years before I would feel anything. But yeah, I would start to feel more masculine. And then I realized, and I don't know if I've ever shared this, but I realized right from the beginning that I had to learn how to be a man. And if I would have seen those signs, what I see now, how God created me female, then maybe I would have been able to realize, Hey, you know, I was born female and no matter what I do, that won't ever change. But I didn't, I wanted this so bad

and no one was going to get in my way. So how long, and I've seen pictures of you, you know, you've showed me pictures when, when you were fully transitioned. Yeah. You passed. I mean, pretty, like I was like, I would not at all think that you were biologically female like a few years into your transition. So how long did you live as a man then? Yeah, just about six years. So 2011, I started mid 2011 on testosterone. I started the process in 2010, near the end of that year and then

as i came out to everyone it was 2011 and then i decided to detransition and get off of testosterone in 2017 did when you were transitioning you know one story is one story and so when we're asking kind of practical questions you know there, there's, yeah, I just don't want to, I want to make sure that people don't read everybody's trans experience, you know, through the lens of one story. So with that caveat, you know, like whatever you say is, you know, true to you, it might not be someone else's experience, but did transitioning, you know, you had these kind of, I mean, issues going on, you're angry or dealing with an addiction, you're, you

have gender dysphoria. Did the transitioning alleviate, I guess specifically the gender dysphoria for you, did it alleviate that distress? Yeah, I would say for almost like 95% alleviated. Okay. I always say to Preston that my, my experiences are always my story and my experiences. Not every trans person will, will experience what I experienced. Like you said, once you meet trans people, the spectrum of dysphoria and this, and even how people, you know, use trans, it could be different yeah yeah from person to person i feel like it means something different sometimes right and and and i always like to make that um very clear but yeah i would say that it did alleviate a lot um i felt more comfortable in my body when I looked at the mirror and I saw Bryson.

That was my chosen name. I thought that, yeah, this is who who I was supposed to be. And that was real to me because I and I think I shared this quite a few years ago on your podcast. It was just a real distorted view of how I looked. I was labeled misgendered all my entire life and I felt more masculine. And when I looked in the mirror, I saw a man I thought more masculine. And so when I realized that that's not what I looked like, looking back from Bryson to Kyla, pictures in my youth and all that, I could see that I was female looking back from Bryson to Kyla pictures in my youth and all that I could see that I was female looking back interesting so what led to your yeah your your desire to

detransition was that a growing process was it a Jesus encounter was it like what it was a little bit of everything probably a couple years I was five, four or five years into my transition and new people took over the ministry in recovery, which I had to go to in early recovery. It was mandatory for us to go to. And that recovery ministry was God Rock. It was very like, yeah, we had a pastor and he preached, but it was very open and accepting of every single person. And the word of God was spoken, but we didn't do anything. It was a ministry, so we didn't do community groups or home groups or anything like that. So we weren't engaging a lot outside of the ministry.

It was probably about four or five years into the ministry where I was still going and new people took over God Rock. And that was, I talk about Jess and BJ and Kyle and Heidi a lot, my closest friends here. And then we got planted as a church. And I think that that was one of the biggest things because they started to do community groups and home groups. And I started to go and we were digging into the word of God and we were becoming super close in our relationships. But here I had like 30 something years of this big other life secret. And at this time in my transition, I was just considered, I wanted to be called stealth trans. So what that is, is like, I didn't want anyone to know my biological sex. And I just walked around through the world just as Bryson male.

And I would tell whoever I wanted to if it was safe and I felt that I could trust them. So did the ministry, did BJ and Jess, did they know you were trans or no? No, I don't think they ever knew. Kyle and I had went through recovery together. And so like there was about five years of knowing each other, but it was a secret that I believe he kept and I kept by that time. I mean, I fully passed. And so he embraced me as Bryson and we were kind of walking that out together.

Okay. Did you start to experience any kind of transition regrets aside from kind of your growing encounter, re-encounter with Christ? Or was it purely a spiritual kind of motivation that caused you to want to detransition back to female? Yeah, that's a good question. I honestly really didn't give it any thought. Yeah, it was the back of my mind. I knew who I was before my transition, but I just thought I could follow Jesus and be transgender and Bryson. But as I started to dig into the word of God and see, like, for me, just seeing how important gender was, and even with same-sex attraction, how I look at Genesis and how God created sex and marriage to be between one man and one woman. And his design, he said, was very good for these things. And then I started to think, oh man, like, do I believe everything that the Bible says? And am I willing to submit anything and everything

to him no matter what? But it didn't come to my radar until probably a year before my transition, my detransition. Oh, okay. So you were having kind of a spiritual awakening or like, you know, revisiting the text of scripture. Yeah, before you started to detransition. So it seems like your renewed spiritual outlook had a pretty significant cause for you to want to detransition so so it seems like your your your renewed spiritual outlook had a pretty significant cause for you to want to detransition yeah and then i started to see like jess and heidi and kyle and bj do biblical manhood and womanhood so well and how the church functioned in these roles, I started to feel the actual weight of what it would look like for me to be a man as the Bible calls us to be. And that weight weighed too heavy on me. I realized that I couldn't carry that weight and do everything

that God was asking a biological male to do because I saw it done well. Can you unpack what you mean by that biblical manhood? That could be a kind of a volatile phrase these days. It is. And that's why it's hard sometimes to share these things, because we have to realize that we're all in different places. We're all interpreting scripture differently. We can't put my time frame or my experience on to another trans person. We just need to be as the church in the word of God, loving one another and walking together and pointing people to the beauty and the glory of Jesus and allowing, it's not me or you that changes someone. It's Jesus, the Holy Spirit himself. And yeah, so when I started to see, and this is a big word too, submission done properly, living the life of being a tomboy and always having, unfortunately,

to act a certain way over my life just became tiring. And so when I see that I saw manhood and womanhood done biblically well, I saw that Jess and Heidi had this freedom to be who God created them to be, to encourage and teach. to encourage and teach. And then I saw Kyle and BJ using their God-given gifts to lead and to, you know, do all these things in biblical ways. And then I just felt like I honestly thought I wanted to marry a godly woman. And that really challenged me to think about,

would a godly woman want to marry a trans person? Would that be biblical to them? Or how would that look? And that just unpacked a lot of questions, a lot of hard questions that I had. So you're wrestling, I mean, going back to this part of your story, I mean, you're wrestling with a lot of not just physical stuff and in recovery and now spiritual things thrown at you and new relationships. How would you describe your, now your newfound

Christian community? Did they, how did they, how did they, I guess, walk with you through what is a multi-faceted, complex part of your journey here? Yeah. So I just remember Jess coming to me about a year and a bit before. And she just sat beside me and she felt the Holy Spirit call her to sit beside me. It was actually a pivotal time in my life because I wasn't going to return back to God Rock. I was done. There was some conflicts and stuff in recovery that I was dealing with and I just felt that I didn't belong there. And that might have been my last time. And I remember her just walking to me and sitting beside me. And we just talked for like an hour or more.

And right in that instant, even when I ask her now, she says it was in that instant that it was just so easy for us to connect. And she didn't know that I was born female. And so she just obeyed the Holy Spirit to go talk to a guy. And then we started to build a relationship, but it was more Kyle and BJ that I had the closest relationship with because they were walking with me, discipling me, mentoring me as Bryson. So what they did, which I believe that we need to do as Christians and as the church is meet people where they're at. I already was fully transitioned, five years transition. There was no thought of detransitioning. My legal name was changed. My legal marker was changed to male. If someone would have came up

to me and said, oh, you know, like, I heard that you're transgender, and you're born female, you must detransition, like, I would have been out of there so fast, because I wouldn't have felt like I was loved and cared for. Like, I believe that we're called to love and care for people coming into the church, I would have felt like more of a project or more of something that you believe, and then you must put that on me, the weight of that on me. But they didn't even know if I was a Christian really at first. So expecting me to do something, maybe not even filled with the Holy Spirit, maybe not even saved. How am I going to have the power to do anything in Christ?

That's so good. And so, I mean, I'm hearing you say, so now I'm hearing you almost say like, now this is not just your individual story, but this is probably a better approach in general to, you know, I'm sure people are listening and they have, you know, trans people come to their church or, you know, the, the question we get all the time, you know, what do we, what do we do if someone's transitioned, they come to our church and they want to become a member or, um, or they are baptized, baptized. And like, do we say we must de-transition? Do we not? I mean, I get this question all the time. I'm sure you do too. So can you, yeah. Can you just maybe unpack maybe more of a, you know, what is a more general kind of Christian approach to trans people wherever they're at in their journey and how the church should respond?

Because, I mean, it's a lot of media hype these days, a lot of anger, a lot of documentaries, you know, stuff going around. I just see a ton of anger and fear and anger and misunderstanding and stereotyping. And yeah, I think the church desperately needs guidance in this conversation. So yeah. Yeah, I agree too. The only thing, well, not the only thing, but the one thing that I can say is they, the four people that walked really close to me, they loved Jesus and his word more than they loved anything. And so because they had that intimate personal relationship with him, they were compelled to love well with compassion because they were being made more like Jesus. And when we love him and we see his beauty and we're in awe of him,

I think we can't help but to love and have compassion for one another. And so that is a huge part of it. Now there's a big difference with somebody. I just recently asked Jess and Heidi, you know, about like, how did you walk this out? I've asked them many times, like, how did you walk this? They did say one thing, though, that I was soft to the Word of God already. And I did. I always loved the Bible. I always loved Jesus. I see his faithfulness through my life. And even though for a long period of time, I fell away from Christ, I see that he held me. And I had to come to the end of myself in order to see how beautiful he was. And so that's a big thing because when we're walking with people and someone says, Hey, can you walk with me? I want to do whatever the Bible says. And that's what we did. We put the authority of the Bible. We, we all agreed that we wanted to live that out the best that we could, and then extend grace to one another because they were going to make mistakes and hurt me and I was going to be defensive which I was and hurt them and so

that's the beauty of a relationship when we are focused on Jesus is that we are able to extend grace, I believe, more graciously because we want to honor him and serve him and love others well. So I believe we have to remember that every single person, trans or not, were made and created in the image of God, imago Dei, and our value is infinite. We are so valued by God and should be valued by one another, especially in the church. If we understand the full gospel for us, ourselves, and then understand it for everybody else.

Well, that's so important because, I mean, it seems like more and more in our culture today people are more than ever maybe i don't know more than ever but really hungering for that right i mean to feel valued and and to be um seen as worthy and and to be loved as a dignified person. You know, like I just, when people come to the realization that there is a creator and that creator made them to be his masterpiece, that God doesn't just love us. He actually likes us. He delights in us. He doesn't delight in our sin, but delights in us even when we sin.

Like even when we, he doesn't delight in, delight in us. Isn't like, well, you messed up. So now I'm kind of like, not kind of, you know, sick of you and you're disgusting to me and like, oh, okay. Now you did something good. Okay. Now I delighted in you. Ah, you messed up. And it's not, he delights in our humanity and he grieves when we fall into destructive behavior, but it's a grief, right? It's, it's a, I want, it's his heart saying, I want my creation to live according to my design. And I know that that's the way they're going to flourish best. And it's that kind of posture. But it's hard because I think it might have thrown us a curveball because you said, you know, one of the things about BJ and Jess and the people you're interacting with is because they were so committed to the word of God. Like that was a priority. And I was going to, I thought you were going to say, therefore, you know, they knew I was a female and they needed me to detransition because they

uphold held the truth of the word of God. But you, you went towards because they upheld the word of God. Therefore they went towards compassion and love and grace and listening and understanding and meeting someone where they're at. That's not always the case though, with people that are like, you know, this is going to become a derogatory statement, but, you know, Bible thumpers, you know. But this is a Bible thumping in the other direction of like,

no, it's the kindness of God that leads to repentance. So the more we dive into the word of God, the more kind and gracious and compassionate we should be. But that's not, why is that not happening as much as it should in the church, especially with regard to LGBTQ-related questions? Yeah, I think there's so many different reasons why it's not. I think our vertical relationship with Jesus is a big thing. If we're not having that abiding relationship with Christ, then we're not being filled.

We're cutting off that relationship to be more like him so then when I'm empty and I am not in the word and I'm thirsty and I'm dry and I'm struggling then then I'm just living out myself and people don't need more of me it's gross they need more of him and I think we try to do that so often is like oh i'm gonna love people in my own strength yeah that that that's not always great it's never great actually we need supernatural love and compassion that only he can give the other thing is that's so important that i think we do wrong is we always, no, I shouldn't say we always, but a lot of times what we do is we have like a timeframe for someone to

arrive, but we're never going to arrive until we get to heaven or he comes back. Jesus comes back. We are always going to be sanctified. That's a big word, but you back, we are always going to be sanctified. That's a big word. But you know, we're always going to be changing to become more like him. And so when we say, I'm going to love you until or unless, it doesn't mean that we stray away from telling people hard truth because they did, but they never stopped loving me and being abandoned from my dad and everything. I had so many walls up also being treated not great most of my life because I was different. I didn't trust everybody. And so what I needed to see and I saw in these people where my walls started to come down is that and it took it took years and years of just continuing to tell me you belong. You're loved. You are accepted here.

We do care about you. We love you. And it's that agape love that Christ shows for us that we want to extend to others is that just unconditional love for one another. This episode is sponsored by AG1 by Athletic Greens. Okay, so I love having energy and feeling good. And the older I get, the more important my health is to me. And so I try to exercise regularly and eat well, but even healthy diets don't usually give you all the nutrition you need. So the best nutritional supplement I found is AG1. And I'm not just saying this because AG1 is paying me to say this. I've been taking AG1 for several months before they started sponsoring the podcast. In fact, I reached out to them to say, you know, can I advertise your product? Because

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So if you're looking for a simpler and cost-effective supplement routine, Athletic Greens is giving you a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. So if you go to athleticgreens.com forward slash T-I-T-R, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash T-I-T-R to check it out and take advantage of the special offer. I want to ask you a hard question and I don't expect you to have an ironed out answer, but like, um, you know, you, you came in soft, you were soft to the word of God. They met you where you're at. They loved you unconditionally and you ended up deciding to detransition. And, and I know that wasn't because they demanded that. Um, I think they probably, I would assume that they believe that that was probably a good discipleship decision, but they weren't mandating that you do that in their timing.

In your opinion, I guess, a framework like that, you know, how do you, what is your advice to other Christians walking with other trans people who might be in a similar spot, but maybe we all are or aren't soft with the word of God, maybe don't feel the need to detransition. Maybe they are soft with the word of God, but they also don't, they're like, I'm not feeling the detransition thing, you know, like how do you, how would you recommend non-trans people, Christians who are maybe have people in their life that are trans and maybe transition? Like what, what does that look like to walk with somebody and i know i'm asking a you know i guess the right response is well it depends on each individual you know so but but in general

yeah what kind of advice would you give to somebody who um maybe is out there who has a trans person in their life i've been really digging and wrestling with this exact thing because i am being asked more as i speak and as I step out in this conversation like what does this look like what like where do you stand in this area uh um what is okay and what is not and what and so I've weeped over this because I don't want us just to be people that speak on this conversation and listeners hear whatever they want to hear and then they use that against somebody. Yes, 100%. And that breaks my heart. want you to hear is that he's enough, that I believe when we surrender everything. So this is the other part of that conversation is I also saw them do everything well in the church where

if you wanted to be a leader and you wanted to do more in the church, it was equal ground for everyone. So it didn't matter if I was transgender or if the drummer was living with a non-believer and, you know, like what that looked like. We were all equal in that. And I think that once we do that, then there's an equal ground for everyone. And then we want to dig into the word of God

and read it and see God's design. I do believe that the call for every single Christian is the same. To deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow Jesus. Now, surrender might look different in areas of each of our lives. God asked me to surrender my transition to him. He said that I was living against his design for me as female. And so what I did was one of the hardest things is in obedience. I just said, God, I want to surrender whatever you ask me and having everything in open hands to him, like nothing's off limit.

hands to him, like nothing's off limit. And so when we are digging into the word of God, I believe that as the Holy Spirit works through the word and we see his good design, you said, it's the best place for us as humans to flourish is to live inside his design. So if I believe the Bible is true and real and living and breathing and I submit my life to it, then I have to be obedient. And I don't see scripture any other way as I interpret it, as I live it out, as God's spoken to me, other than gender is so important to him. And gender is so important to him. I, you know, I mean, I agree with everything you're saying. And I've, you know, in case somebody doesn't know, I mean, I've, you know, I've written on this topic from a theological perspective and philosophical, not obviously from a personal perspective.

And, you know, as I've wrestled with kind of the ethics of transitioning, like I came to the conclusion, I do think scripture says, you know, our biological sex is a significant part of human identity and that should be upheld and embrace, you know, as part of God's design. So I don't, I can't justify on a scriptural level, the morality of transitioning. Okay. So that's my biblical view. And I hold that, you know, I think there's a lot of complexities. I mean, I my special chapters in my book. What about this? What about that?

So that's where my theology is at. Where I hold that in, I don't even know if it's intention with, but like, you know, and I'm sure you know people aside from even yourself that, you know, I can think of two or three friends in particular that the dysphoria was so severe, so crippling that transitioning was kind of a last ditch effort to survive. And I, so I'm going to give a lot of caveats here because it's such a sensitive conversation. So please bear with me. I do think the, you know, the suicide narrative is, on the one hand, incredibly touchy and sensitive and excruciating. I've lost friends to suicide. I've had really dear people in my life that have struggled with suicidality. I also see it also can be weaponized, too. Like sometimes parents are told, do you want an alive son or a dead daughter, as if that's the binary option.

Either you transition your 15-year-old or they are going to end up committing suicide. I think that's an absolutely irresponsible thing to say to a parent. So it's complex. So all that to say, I want to acknowledge the complexity of suicidality, how it's being used sometimes and weaponized in some cases. and weaponized in some cases um but they're you know for somebody who legitimately has had crippling dysphoria transitioning was a last ditch effort and it uh it did alleviate the dysphoria and for years for like there's no regret there's like i can't imagine going back to that state of dysphoria i would literally i would just end up killing myself, you know, and I have a few friends that are in that category. And so they look at me, you know, and say, what, what do you think I should do? I'm like,

I can't say, yes, the Bible says your transition was the right thing to do. I just, I can't, I have not encountered that argument before on a scriptural or theological or even philosophical level. However, I can't, I don't, I don't, I honestly don't know. I don't know. I don't have a good pastoral, certainly not a good psychological response to, okay, then what do I do in my state? Do I go back to my birth sex and basically either await kind of a miracle from God. Maybe there's some kind of psychotherapy I haven't engaged in. And that's where that's outside of my pay grade. I don't, you know, some people would say, no, there are kinds of psychotherapy that would alleviate the dysphoria to the point of where somebody could actually survive. Maybe there's

other things that are intertwined with the dysphoria that haven't been unraveled, you know? And again, these are questions outside of my area of expertise. So I don't, I don't, and I'm not, I'm not dodging the question. I just want to acknowledge how in some cases it can be extremely pastorally complex. And that's where I don't, I don't know. Do you have, do you have any thoughts? I mean, I would love your feedback on that. Cause I mean, here's me as a non-trans, non-gender disparate person wrestling with this on a theological level. And yet people are asking, well, what kind of pastoral guidance can you give? And I don't, I'm going to throw it on you, Kyla.

What kind of pastoral guidance in those kinds of situations? Is it just kind of, you know what? Love them, trust God and acknowledge the complexity and sit in that space forever? I mean, I don't know. It's difficult. And that's why I believe that we can't

just treat people like everybody else or like me like oh you're a trans person your name is whatever you must be like kyla no um that's why we got to meet people where they're at, because this is real. I was suicidal. The dysphoria was so bad that I didn't think I could live anymore. However, I also didn't submit my life to him in every area. And so I was always trying to fill that void of where only God could completely fill me because we were created only for him to fill that one place. Marriage isn't going to fix it. You know, singleness isn't going to fix it. Transition's not going to fix it.

Alcohol is not going to fix it. Money is not going to fix it. Nothing's going to fix it. Only he can. And so what I see is that the struggle is going to be a lifetime, probably. I have never been fully healed or completely experienced freedom in this area. I have to submit and weep and cry and talk to my friends a lot. Near the beginning, it was every day even.

I think that's why I'm so grateful for what you do, Preston, is because you gave me a place to be able to give hope at such an early area and time in my life, it gave me that God-given purpose that I feel he called me to. And so I thank you for that. But we just need to realize that we're all on our own path and journey. If we believe in Christ, then let's point each other to him. Yeah. Let's walk together in the hard times. And that's what I breaks my heart is that not everyone has the community that I have. Yeah. And people are struggling alone in these. I can feel depressed and suicidal, so to speak, and not wanting to be here anymore because I hate this struggle sometimes so bad. It doesn't mean that I want to end my life. It means that I want it to be fixed. I want it to

be how God created it to be in the beginning, where I have congruence with my brain and my body and my soul and everything is in congruence and perfectly together like he created it to be before the fall. I desire that so deeply for every trans person because I know what it feels like to struggle. And so as people walking with other trans people, I think that we just need to meet them with compassion. Now, Jessa and Heidi and Kyle had to say some really difficult things in my life that hurt. But if we listening to the Holy spirit speak, which they did,

they took courageous steps of faith to tell me hard things. And do you think that they wanted my, my, our relationship to end because Because it could have, I could have got defensive and said, I'm taking off. There was one really close place where, where I was hurt that I was like, I don't know if I can do this anymore, but they literally hunted me down and came and found me and said, no, come closer, Kyla Bryson at the time, come closer to us. Don't run.

What a beautiful picture. Gosh. I know you keep talking about setting a conversation with BJ and Jess and you and yeah, we need to do that. Cause I, I would love to get to know them more. Um, you know, something I thought of, I mean, even, even sit sitting in the tension is not a cop-out. That can be part, like lament, lamenting. It can be part of discipleship, like a necessary part, not a sidestep, but actually part of the discipleship journey. Sitting in that complex confusion, difficult tension, and lamenting that we live in a creation that has been marred by sin and is introduced all kinds of things that interrupt God's original design, you know? Yeah. Even lamenting something like gender dysphoria that can be so, from what I, you know, my, my outside perspective can be just so complex and excruciating and debilitating and confusing. And it's just, we can lament that

people even have to experience something like this. So you've been detransitioned back to your birth sex for about six years now. So how would you describe your dysphoria during when you were transitioned versus now? Is it back to where it was prior to your transition? Can you manage it more? Where does that look like for you? And I know, again, everybody's different. Yeah. As I was being discipled at the very beginning and just people walking with me, I started to be taught that because my dysphoria was so high as I was detransitioning even, it's like I sometimes just have to show up.

I didn't want to go to home group. My dysphoria was so bad. I didn't want to walk into the church where I would spend hours before that struggling to get ready and then feel just brokenness. And I shared that in, you know, with you and your book.

My dysphoria, like everyone was just staring at me and picking at the pieces and misgendering me and telling me I wasn't female enough. And that just created such anxiety that I could barely even leave my room sometimes. But as I just put one foot in front of the other, this is the thing I wasn't doing it alone. There was other people that were even discipling me that didn't want to show up every day. But we just did because being together was better than doing it alone. I learned in early recovery that isolation kills. myself and isolate myself. And that's where the enemy can come in and just kick us around when we're alone and tell us lies. And we just get into this tunnel vision of just being super alone and lonely and there's no hope. We need to be around each other. And so as I walked that out, it wasn't until Preston, your book came out. so that was probably like what two years before I wrote that yeah yeah and then um I got your book and I'm reading it and there's my part of gender

dysphoria and I remember just breaking down and crying and I called Jess like that instant and I'm like Jess the the dysphoria that I gave to Preston two years ago, I don't feel that in that degree anymore all the time. And I was like, whoa, God has actually done some healing in the deepest parts of my gender identity. And he's given me some kind of ability to live with it and to live in some kind of congruence, but not always. I'm curious in your, I'm going to ask you to self-diagnose, which, you know, is, is, can be sketchy. But do you think in your experience, is your gender dysphoria, is it related with gender stereotypes? Because I've heard you talk about just the thought of being in a certain environment where you're going to be made to feel not like a real woman. If you're in an environment that had completely had accepted women as maybe more masculine as long,

you know, like, cause these are, you know, personality things that aren't like holy or not holy according to, you know, I don't think they are. So you like play hockey or,

you know, you're more whatever, like, you're like homeboy type things. Okay. Who cares? Yeah. Just be godly,

follow Jesus. And that's what, you know, like if you're in an environment that had that, that didn't like exacerbate those kinds of gender stereotypes gender stereotypes, is that intertwined with your dysphoria? Like to put it the opposite, like if you're in an environment where like, oh, girls are expected to, you know, wear pink dresses and stay home and make babies and then guys are expected to go out and shop wood or whatever. And like if you're in that kind of environment, would that exacerbate your dysphoria? Yeah, I think so.

It's when a lot of times when I don't know people and I don't know how safe I am with them, that can trigger some of my gender dysphoria. But my gender dysphoria usually happens anyway, before I even step into a public place, which used to make it so difficult. My gender dysphoria is so intertwined into everything that I've had to really ask God, could you show me, actually rip apart some of the intertwined places where it's meeting me in certain times and areas of my life, maybe situations. And can you actually give me some knowledge or understanding of it so I can understand it better so I can walk through it? Not just easier, but I want to know why I do things, why these things affect me, what kind of things might help these areas of my life.

Now, if an environment, say God Rock, was really like overbalanced on what a female should be and looks like, and it's not biblical, that probably would affect how I feel. Because with my family at my church, my local family, and as a member when we meet, I'm just allowed to be myself. I think I beat myself up more than anyone sometimes for not looking more feminine or not acting more feminine. And I've had to lay that at the foot of the cross and say, I can't be anyone. What I want to be God is I want to be a godly woman with what you've given me. Right, right. And then use the gifts and the talent and all these things for your glory. Yeah. But I can't be anyone else. That's so good. I remember the first time we did our first filming

together. Now that makes sense. I mean, here you're in a, you're going on video, a film, lots of people are going to watch it. You're around, you know, camera people that you don't know. And I remember that you were getting spikes of dysphoria. And I saw it in you. I mean, this is only like maybe six months, nine months into your detransition. You were just fresh living as a woman again. So that makes sense when you said, yeah, new environments, people you don't know, kind of the unknown. And knowing that now you can get in your own head even and start to you know

oh man that's gosh i we only have a few more minutes left kyla but i i would love to get your thoughts on something we haven't even talked about like because you do i mean you're doing more and more work in this area and helping churches and christians and you know obviously talking with other trans people i want to talk about youth culture is where I'm trying to go. Um, cause there's obviously a, you know, a very high rate of teenagers now identifying as trans or, or, you know, other identities, non-binary, gender, queer, gender fluid. Um, have you spoken into that specific part of this conversation and what have you learned in, in maybe what kind of advice can you give to church leaders in particular or parents, maybe you have kids who are identifying. Yeah. What, what, what words of wisdom do you have to give, give to us as, as, you know,

we think specifically about kind of youth culture in this conversation. Right. So this conversation is happening all around us, regardless, uh, if our Christian homes want to have this conversation, uh, or our church want to have this conversation or our church wants to have this conversation. And that's why I'm so passionate to share my testimony and be vulnerable is because when I look back, I don't think my pastor or my church did anything specifically wrong. They loved me. They just didn't know how to walk with anyone like me. And so I, we weren't creating and, and cultivating a place at youth group where I would even feel comfortable going to my closest people or the youth pastor and saying, Hey, you know, like same-sex attraction

is something that I'm feeling, you know, towards the girls in the church. What do I do with that? How do I follow Jesus and still wrestle with this? Because I felt I was disqualified because I had a distorted view of God's character and really the gospel itself is that I can come as I am. And having same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria and all these kinds of things, they don't disqualify me from following him. That would have been a real game changer for me. And I think that we need to do that in our churches,

cultivate a place where we're obviously discerning with age groups, how much we share and how much we tell and where we tell them. Make sure the parents are aware of what we're doing. But we need to have these conversations because they are happening. And someone is going to find out somewhere down the line. And if they don't feel loved in the church or their youth group, we're going to go outside that area and find belonging and love because that's who we were created to be, to find belonging and love elsewhere. And it's dangerous. How do we cultivate that where we're at in our homes and in the church. Do you think that's directly related to the high numbers of trans people identify or sorry, teenagers identified as trans that there's a, a, uh, partly at least maybe a desire for belonging and, and they can find that in, in a trans community at their school or something, or that's even that, even, even asking that question, I know it's going to be hotly disputed because then you're like, well, they're just,

you know, chasing a trend or something or, you know. Yeah. It is. It's hard to answer. It could be. Um, I remember, like I said earlier, when I found the LGBTQ plus community coming from a Christian home and, you know, never experiencing that and then experiencing it, that other people have this experience. And now I have safe places to share, even if it's not Christian environment, I had a place where we could relate. And that's what we need to do. We need to relate to others, no matter whether it's gender dysphoria or same sex attraction. Preston, like, what do are you what do you struggle with yeah like because we all struggle in some area yeah can we find commonality rather than uh differences

all the time um in humanity and so yeah rapid onset gender dysphoria could be created or or cultivated because we want to fit and belong and And this is a place where we do, or I say, we never have the right to really judge somebody who says they're struggling with gender dysphoria and say, oh, but you're not in the percentile. I don't believe you're really struggling with gender dysphoria. I think this is onset gender dysphoria. No, we don't have the right to do that. We got to treat everyone. Okay, you're really rustling and struggling and this is painful for you. Can I meet you there?

Yeah. And sometimes in this conversation, and just to put it plainly for people that might not know exactly, you know, there's a big debate, you know, in this conversation, whether this kind of really skyrocketing number of trans people identify as trans, you know, are they really trans? And then it's like, well, what does that mean to be really trans? And, or is there, you know, social influences that are, uh, well, social factors influencing people to identify as trans, you know, maybe they're, they're lonely and isolated and they see a community of trans people at school. And, and

in some context that can earn you more social collateral. You know, I've talked to people that, you know, said to be trans was more highly praised than to not be trans, you know, and then some maybe more progressive environment. So, and then people say, well, no, that's, you know, that's, this is real. You know, there are trans people, this number of trans people have always existed and it's not a social contagion or whatever. Anyway, one thing people don't realize is even if certain cases of someone experiencing gender dysphoria did have a social influence, that doesn't mean that dysphoria is any less real. They are still wrestling, maybe significantly. Whatever the cause is, whether it's a social environment, whether it's biological, whether it's a blend of both, most likely it's things we're social beings. It's probably a blend

of both. That doesn't mean their experience is any less real. It doesn't mean like making it up or don't really have dysphoria. I mean, again, maybe, but that's, unless you're a qualified psychologist that knows the person very, very well, you don't have the ability to make that call. So it goes back to your point that John 1.14, right? Like Jesus incarnated laying a pattern of the word becoming flesh and embodying both grace and truth. And that's the pattern we need to take with somebody wherever they're at in life. Yeah. And I think of it like this. What if that person isn't actually experiencing gender dysphoria? They're experiencing something that's hard enough that they feel anxious or they feel these feelings um and so we live in a world where we anxiety is so high right now yeah uh you know covid didn't help

uh isolation doesn't help you know we we've got social media everywhere. We're being influenced, all those kind of things. But we just have to get on a little, like a practical level with one another, that we're going, we're walking this life out. And we live in a broken world. Broken sexuality is something that every single person experiences, whether or not it's one extreme or another, uh, it doesn't matter. Um, but let's just do life together. Let's walk this out. Let's, let's be real people with one another. Kyla, that's a great word to end on. Um, thank you so much for coming back on the show. I just love talking to you and I love that you continue to speak into this. This is not an easy conversation to speak into. Some, some people assume like, well, if you're

same sex attracted or you're trans or used to be trans or whatever, like, oh, so this is just the path that God has laid out for you. But it's like, it's not easy. It's not. Yeah. So thank you for being an awesome voice. And I want to point people to your website. It's in the show notes, should be in the show notes, but kylegillespie.com. K-Y-L-A-G-I-L-L-E-S-P-I-E.com. I don't know why I'm spelling it out. Just click on the show notes below. So we didn't talk about it, but I mean, are you doing more? What does your ministry look like? How would you describe what you do? I mean, cause I know you're, you're getting asked to speak more on this topic. Yeah I I just really go wherever God

leads me um when he opens doors I I say yes and so that can be in any environment whether it's meeting with a teen or an adult uh meeting with parents and talking with them I get lots of emails um you know I speak where like I said wherever opens that door, podcasts where I can, because I think I remember struggling in silence and I don't want anyone to struggle in silence. If they want to reach out, if they want to talk to me, let's have this conversation. And then just, you know, my passion and desire for the church to do this better. So I'm on your website now. You have a contact page. So you're okay. Just my passion and desire for the church to do this better. So I'm on your website now. You have a contact page.

So you're okay. People reach. You might get a flood of emails after this. Yes, absolutely. I just want to say this, though. Answering emails doesn't pay the bills, too. So you have a... Look, this is Kyla.

She's probably gonna be embarrassed if I say this. You have a donate section here on your website and a contact section. I would highly encourage people because I think a lot of people like, oh my gosh, my kid just came out as trans. I would love to talk to Kyla. How do I navigate this? So you're probably going to get maybe a good deal of messages. For those who are reaching out, I would highly encourage you please do donate too. I mean, this is part of part of how you kind of make a living. So yeah, just answering emails all day and responding to people doesn't put food on the table, but donations do.

So please do be generous with your donation for Kyla's ministry. So thank you. Thank you, Preston. Thank you, Kyla, for you. And yeah, yeah. Maybe I'll see you next year at Exiles again. Oh, I would love to be there.

Thanks for everything you do. And it's awesome to talk to you again. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.