I Am My Wife’s Sharon

This morning, as on many mornings, my wife was having a little bit of a hard time.  Mornings can be tough on her…starting a new day, wondering what anxieties it will present to her.  Those of you who have never dealt with real anxiety won’t get this.  Those of you who’ve known someone dealing with anxiety will.

So my role on these mornings is to settle her head, soothe her anxieties, help her face the day.  During our talk, she said to me.

“You’re my Sharon.”

“Your what?” I ask.  Her Sharon?  I like the sound of it, of course, but I had no idea what she was talking about, same as you don’t.

“My Sharon,” she said, “You’re my Sharon. I’m your f***ed-up Ozzy, only without the pills.”

I got it, right away.  Sharon Osbourne is an amazing human being. She is Ozzy’s rock, his stability.  She’s kept him going through hard times and easy, past obstacles that might have done in a lesser love. She gets love.

After I came out to her, my wife’s anxieties–already high–went through the roof, in part because she saw me as a changed person. Change, in her life, has always equalled “bad”, so she was convinced she had lost her rock–me.  The past four months have been rocky for her (no pun intended), partly because of the perceived loss of the one person in her life who was never supposed to change, who was always supposed to be her rock.  I’ve posted on this before.

Also, since I came out, she has refused to allow any signs of femininity in me, or even merely associations with anything female.  So for her to call me her Sharon is a double compliment, and two big steps for her. She’s not only starting to see me as her rock again, despite my “changes”, but she’s also–whether she realizes it or not–beginning to acknowledge some “female” associations with me.

Yes, they are small steps, but they’re big small steps.

Thank you, my loving Parent, for continuing to soften her heart toward me. You are an amazing Parent!

-Dianna Rose

Pain and Forgiveness

Today my wife, daughter and I went to the mall.  My daughter’s birthday is tomorrow and she wanted a second pair of earrings.

We parked outside Macy’s.  Five minutes later we were in the store and walking through the men’s section. My wife gravitates to a pink button-up shirt and starts fawning over it.  It’s a men’s shirt, remember, a fact I point out to her.

“So?’ she says. “Women can wear men’s clothes.  Sometimes they’re more comfortable.”

Forgive my language, but that pissed me off.

I’m forbidden from talking about my crossdressing, from even hinting at it or mentioning anything that could offend my wife about it (which is everything).  So I bite my tongue and take the blow squarely on the chin, because I can’t defend myself against it or fight back in any way.  I can’t say “that’s why I like wearing skirts”, or anything like it.

It hurt, more than anything she’s said to me recently.

So what do I do about it? Do I dwell on it, let it simmer and burn inside of me?  Because that’s what happens when we bury our feelings.

Do I talk to her about it?  Not right now I don’t.  She can’t talk about this with me.  She says she wants to understand it, but she can’t hear anything from me. I understand that.

No.  The only thing that will make me feel better is to let it go.

I know why she has the blocks she has.  I know why she can’t talk about it with me.  I don’t have to like it, but I can’t fault her for it. I have to forgive her, or it will eat me alive.

She doesn’t realize that she’s hurt me.  It doesn’t occur to her that what she said could possibly cause me as much pain as it did. She doesn’t know her words stabbed me like knives.

I can talk about it here, or with my sisters on-line who support me and have been better friends to me than any one I know personally. I can hope the topic comes up in our couples therapy next Wednesday.

Her hurtful words come near the tail end of a depressing weekend, but they would have hurt in any other case.  She admits to the double-standard, but I don’t think she realizes the extent to which she contributes to it.

Tomorrow is an underdressing day.  Tomorrow I return a pretty blouse that doesn’t fit, and try to find the next size up.  Tonight I can talk to my sisters on-line, and feel a little peace from that.

I forgive my wife for the pain she caused me.  I know she didn’t realize she did it.  The pain diminishes.

Another fire through which I have been carried.

-Dianna Rose

Two More Gifts

Last Saturday, my wife went out for the evening with her brother.  I stayed home, because my kids each a friend over and because my wife needed some time away to cut loose.  She often goes out with her brother, which I encourage because for years they were not close at all.

Now, I was a little hurt that she wanted to go out with him but I couldn’t join, partly because the night before she had been complaining about being bored, so I offered to take her out anywhere she wanted.  I even offered to take her dancing, which is something I never do.

We didn’t go out.  What she needed was to escape for a while, and that meant escape from me.  I make her uncomfortable, remember, because I like to wear women’s clothes.

So There I was on Saturday, feeling a little lonely and sorry for myself.  I figured I’d peruse the boards at crossdressers.com and see what people were talking about, and welcome any new members.  I like to welcome the newbies and try to make them feel at home, because many are new to this, and many are confused about themselves.  I try to make them comfortable when they walk in the door.  I’m not alone.  Several of the ladies (CD/TG and GG both) offer this welcome.

One of the new members that night was a GG who signed up because her husband had just come out to her, didn’t have a computer (she’s in the military and is stationed away from home for a while), and she wanted to start gathering advice for him.

She signed up to cd.com solely to support her husband’s crossdressing!  I thought that the most wonderful gesture a wife could make for her husband, and I hated both of them for it.

Yup…I was jealous.  Here was this wonderful, super-supportive wife doing research for her husband to satisfy his crossdressing, while my wife was out escaping from mine.

But, God hates this kind of jealousy, and he set a seed in my heard to supplant it.  I offered this supportive wife the hand of friendship, sending her a private message telling her how wonderful she was and how blessed her husband is to have her there for him.

Well, let me tell you, we had a wonderful post-to-post conversation that night.  Before I knew it, my wife was walking in the door.  Time had flown, and my loneliness and hurt had utterly disappeared.

Gift #1.

By the way, this GG has made friends all across the boards at CD.com.  She’s so open and pleasant and nice that it’s impossible not to be friends with her.

Fast-forward to yesterday, Wednesday.  My wife has her appointment with her therapist (for her anxiety issues and self-realizations) later that morning.  Now, on these days she wakes up nervous and anxious, because therapy stirs the pot.  We talk, and she tells me that on Saturday she had told her brother everything about us—everything, she stresses.

Yes, she told him about me.  No, I had no clue, because when we were over at his house for football Sunday (the day after she told him), he didn’t act any differently toward me than he always does.  She told him I like to wear women’s clothes, and his response was, essentially, “So?”

I think it threw my wife a little, because he was the first person she told about me (she’s told two others) who didn’t think it was bizarre.  His open-minded nature soothed some of her anxieties about me.  Not all of them, and there’s certainly a long way to go yet, but she now sees me as just a little bit less of a monster than she did before.

Gift #2.

I had told my wife some time ago that if she decided she wanted to tell people about me, I was cool with that, so I wasn’t upset at all that she told her brother.  I told her I’m not the one ashamed of what I do or who I am, she is, so if it helps her to talk about it with people, she should.

I’m now “out” to five people (not including my wife, or any of my on-line sisters and brothers), two of which are counselors, one of whom has been working with the LGBT community for two decades.  The others, my wife told.

But I’m okay with that.

Thank you, God, for your gifts of an open-minded brother-in-law, and a GG who not only supports her husband, but has support enough to spare for the rest of us.  You are an amazing Parent!

-Dianna Rose

PS – here’s how supportive this GG is.  Part of our conversation was about nylons, and how she hates them, like most GGs apparently do. I told her I loved them and would wear them 24/7 if I could.  We joked about it, and she said that after she gets out of the military she’ll send me all of her nylons that don’t have holes in them.

Sure she’s joking, but just hearing those words made my night. 

Not going out for at least six months

For some reason, the thought of me going out with the local SISTERS group was causing my wife some intense anxiety and pressure. So I took it off the table for the next six months. Anxiety relieved…hers, anyway.

I was really hoping 2010 was going to be my year for getting out en femme for the first time, but it begins to look as if that’s not going to happen. Will it ever? God promised me it would, but clearly I’m going to have to wait for His timing.  Well, isn’t that always true anyway? 

I’m not a little bummed about it. My only hope is that with this pressure off her, my wife will come to accept me a little sooner. I have my doubts about that too.

I can foresee her becoming equally anxious now about some other aspect of my crossdressing. Am I going to have to keep taking things off the table to keep the pressure off? Will I end up with nothing?

She’s going to make me choose between my crossdressing and our marriage, I think. A life without femme will kill me, I know.

What would you do in my place? Please comment.

-Dianna

Be as a Child

I have four Bible verses today.  The relationship is pretty apparent:

Luke 2:10-11:  But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ[a] the Lord.”

JESUS in Luke 9:48: “Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me: and whosoever shall receive me receiveth him that sent me: for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.” .

Gal. 4:4-7: But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption. As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.

2 Corinthians 5:17: Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

The Christmas season always gets me thinking about children, because of the special child whose birth we celebrate.  Yes, I know the holiday was a few weeks ago.  Does that mean we must stop celebrating the greatest gift ever given?  I, for one, celebrate Christmas all year long, by constantly remembering what it was that our Parent did for us in sending His son to pay for our sins.  We can mark that invoice “Paid in full”, and all we have to do is believe in Him, and love Him.  He already love us–you can bank on that.

As parents, we love our children – unconditionally and without price or payment. (Okay, for the sake or realism I will state that this is not always the case, but it should be). We never stop loving them, no matter the mistakes they make, no matter their failings or successes. A good parent loves her or his child. Period.

How can we ever think our Parent doesn’t love us?  Yet people do, all the time:

“I’ve done bad things.  God can’t possibly love me.  I don’t deserve love.”

“There are people who are so much more needy than I.  God doesn’t have time to love me.”

“I never see any proof that God loves me, so He must hate me.”

…and so on.

God became flesh so that He could suffer for us!  God sent His only child to die for us! Think of it…that tiny baby, lying on a bed of straw, would grow up solely so that God could prove His love for us. What child deserves that fate?  None.  But God gave us that gift anyway. Yes, gift. He did it to show us He loves us, by becoming one of us, but not so He could feel our pain.  He feels that every moment of every day of our lives–He knows us better than we know ourselves, how can He not already know pain?  No, He did it so that we could see that He feels our pain.  So that we could know the depth of His love for us.

And if our Parent loves us, how can we think He doesn’t want what’s best for us?  How can we imagine He won’t take care of us, if we ask Him to?

When our children are too young to fend for themselves we fend for them. When they are frightened we soothe them. When hungry we feed them. When cold we warm, when lost we search until we find. WE–the parents–do these things, and our children trust us implicitly. They don’t worry about where the food is coming from or how we obtain it. They don’t think about the cost of heating or the roof over their head. They know we’ll always give them a hug after a bad dream, hold them until the fear subsides. They know we would search the planet over to find them.

We ALL were young once. Not one of us was born old (even if some days we might feel like it)

So when did we stop trusting our Parent to care for us?

We grew up, started fending for ourselves with regard to our worldly needs.  We soothe ourselves when we’re stressed, we calm ourselves after nightmares.  Over time, we get used to doing things for ourselves…to the point that we forget we have a Parent to whom we can always turn.

We let our children grow up.  We let them make mistakes so they will learn.  We allow them to make their own choices and follow their own paths, but we don’t turn them down when they ask for our help, or our comfort, or our advice.  We give as freely all their adult lives as we did their youth, with one difference: we wait for them to ask.

That’s not saying we don’t offer advice or ideas or suggestions, or tell them first that we love them, but we wait for them top decide to come to us for most things.

God still loves us.  He still speaks to us, even if we are too busy or stressed or lost to hear.  But He waits for us to ask Him for help.  We must be as children again, and trust our Parent to give us what we need, to hold us when we’re scared, to feed us when we’re hungry.

So the next time you’re feeling down, or overburdened, or lost or scared, ask your Parent for help, or guidance, or advice, or love.  He gives it freely and without price, because the price was already paid.

Go ahead.  Ask.  And then Trust Him to deliver.  It may not be the package for which you were hoping, but it’ll always be the one you need. Our Parent loves us more than we can comprehend.

Peace,

-Dianna

God does give us hope

On Saturday, I had a one-on-one appointment with our marriage counselor, a wonderful woman who has been working with the LGBT community for twenty years.

Talking with her alone was an incredibly freeing experience, since I was able to talk about things I can’t mention when my wife and I see her together.  My wife’s anxieties prevent her from wanting to hear or know anything about my crossdressing, so I am frequently brought up against roadblocks in our sessions–”no, can’t talk about that or it might cause an anxiety attack.” “Oh, that topic would lead down this road and she can’t go there right now”–that sort of thing.

But for the first time in my life I was able to tell another soul about me.  My history, my fears, desires, thoughts, feelings.  I was amazingly comfortable speaking openly–which to me is a further sign that I really am pretty okay with who I am. And now our counselor has a better idea of who I am–that can only help her to sort through the miasma of our marriage.  My wife has her own one-on-one appointment in a little over a week.  I hope she will be as open about her fears and wants, so that our therapist has all the information she needs to start effecting a solution.

I won’t go into the details of the topics on which we spoke, but out therapist gave me hope, in a measure I haven’t felt for a long time.  Even something as mundane as closet space–completely out of the question before–now seems no longer out of reach.

One of the last things she asked me was my femme name, and she is now the only other human besides myself who knows both sides of me.  It is a lifted weight.

God frequently works through people–that is a given.  He has definitely worked through my counselor to restore my Hope, and in doing so He has strengthened my faith.  How can we not love a Parent who loves us so much?

One final happy note…when I told my counselor my femme name–Dianna Faith Rose–she said “That’s a pretty name.”  That made me feel pretty, and was a wonderfully uplifting end to our session.  She is good, our counselor.  I thank God for putting me in the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind to find her.

-Dianna Faith Rose

Thanks for a great year’s end!

You’ve probably noticed a dearth of posts here this final month of the year. You know how Christmas gets…busy, busy, busy.

I do want to let you all know how much I appreciate your visiting this site, the feedback and comments I’ve received, the fact that I’ve had over 1500 nearly 2,000 hits on this blog in just the three months or so since I started it. You guys rock!

I’ve got a couple of topics lined up for next year, but in this day and age there’s no reason you can’t suggest topics you’d like my take on, so comment or send me an email and I’ll see what I can come up with.

Yes, I know I just ended a couple of sentences with prepositions…sue me.

Have a great (and safe) New Year’s eve, and a wonderful 2010!

-Dianna Faith Rose

I Love Being Gender-Blurred!

My wife doesn’t accept my crossdressing. Those of you who have been following these confessions are well aware of that. Up until very recently, she has barely even acknowledged it. Owing to a number of factors, it is something which she can’t handle.

But the other day she came close to acknowledging it. It was after hot wings and beef soup and cheese curls and more hot wings and football and family. We were just settling in back at home and of course I got the belchies. So I’m sitting there burping and belching and she’s complaining about how disgusting I’m being. Of course I played it up a little after that.

Then she says “You do like being masculine, too, sometimes, don’t you?” More statement than question, though I can see the need for reassurance in her eyes.

“That I do,” I answer, and proceed to burp again and scratch myself (I didn’t itch…just wanted to show her I’m still a guy.)

I started thinking about it later and realized that I do enjoy masculine stuff as well as feminine. That may sound surprising to you, but here’s why it surprised me a little.

I only accepted myself for what I am a year or so ago. I only really started expressing it a few months ago. What I found then was that I couldn’t get enough of the girly stuff. I think I was a little desperate to catch up on all the “girl” I’d been missing all my life, so I overdid it a little—on my cd.com posts, shopping, buying that cute little pink dress—though I certainly don’t regret any of it, especially not the pink dress. In short, I went pretty much “all girl” for a while.

But my wife’s question made me think. I still like masculine stuff, too. I really enjoy the Sunday Patriots games with family and friends, and yell at the botched plays and amazing touchdowns as loudly as anyone. I love my brother-in-law’s hot wings…best I’ve ever eaten, and messy as all get out. I love the idea of ripping down my old deck with some sweat and curses and a prybar. I enjoy watching Nascar (though fair to be said that appeals to many women, too).

I realized that my ideal Christmas would consist of gift cards for both Home Depot and Macy’s. I love the fact that I’m comfortable cussing out Brady and Moss for failing to connect on that “gimme” pass, and the next minute I’m admiring the cheerleaders’ uber-cute Christmas outfits, wondering where I could get one. I like the fact that I can stand and talk with a co-worker knowing that I’m wearing a pink silky bra under my shirt—not to mention the red ruffled panties and white tights under my jeans.

I do prefer skirts and dresses to jeans. I’d rather wear pretty panties than plain white briefs any day. I love the feel of tights on my legs, and the shimmer of my satin cami on my body. But I like doing guy stuff too.

I think I’m balancing out a little bit. The girl is still there—she’s always there, and if I have anything to say about it she’ll always be there—but I can wait to indulge her while I take care of replacing that drywall in the closet.

That’s not to say I’d be averse to making the repairs while wearing a skirt, mind you…but I wouldn’t want to ruin it. It’s such a pretty skirt.

-Dianna Rose

Is Praying for Clothes Allowed?

A recent Daily Bible Verse touched upon the subject of both Heavenly and Earthly gifts, which led me to think about something that bothers a lot of people.  Here’s the link. It’s a quick read, so go check it out.  I’ll wait for you.

http://thedailybibleverse.blogspot.com/2009/12/james-117-every-good-and-perfect-gift.html

Two passages in the summary caught my eye:

“Sometimes we see God giving only heavenly gifts – salvation, guidance, peace. But he also gives earthly gifts – prosperity, success, favor.”

“our heavenly guide will use all of these gifts to transform us. The God who does not change uses good and perfect gifts to mold us into the children that will change the earth.”

Up until then, I had always thought that praying for earthly gifts was a big no-no in God’s eyes. But that’s because we have been so taught by our parents, our pastors, our churches.  Can our churches be wrong?  More and more lately I believe they can.  The closer I get to God myself, the further from Him most of the churches seem.

Don’t get me wrong…I still get a lot from church, but in some cases, the things they teach just strike me as a little bit off.

But after I read that daily lesson, I started thinking maybe it was okay to pray for earthly gifts…if they are the ones He wants us to have in order to better our relationship with Him, or bring others closer to Him.  And even before I read it, I knew the answer, because He was already giving it to me.

For a long time (years), I struggled with one aspect of my faith.  Well, truthfully, like many of us, I struggled with several aspects of my faith, but for the purposes of this post, I’ll concentrate on this one particular aspect.

For years, every once in a while, I’d need something more from my crossdressing than I had.  What I had was essentially a few minutes here and there in which to dress.  Now, for many years this was  enough—more than enough, since the urge to dress didn’t strike all that often. Well, truthfully, it never went away entirely, but I could ignore it for long periods. But in recent years I found myself feeling the need more and more often.  I’d spend a few minutes in a dress or tights, and afterwards I’d feel deflated, depressed, and just plain unhappy about having to take them off.

I started praying for more time and opportunities to dress. I’d become desperate in my prayer, almost whiny, and each time I thought “It’s wrong of me to even ask Him for this.”  And, because I wasn’t praying for it for the right reasons (i.e. selfish ones), He didn’t answer.

Then one day he did answer, and in that answer He showed me the right reasons.

I had an opportunity to spend an hour and a half in one of my wife’s dresses, a pair of tights I had bought for me (because I couldn’t bring myself to wear my wife’s), and a pair of size 8 ½ beige pumps that my wife no longer wore.

It was heavenly!

I mean precisely that.  I felt so relaxed and comfortable (disregarding my pinched toes) that I knew I was meant to wear dresses. I knew I’d be more happy in a dress than in jeans.  In short, wearing those clothes put me in a better frame of mind—and the right frame of mind is essential for hearing our Parent speaking.

Now, I had also struggled for some time with my writing.  At first I prayed to be published because I wanted to make money.  So again the wrong reasons.  After a while I realized that my motivations were way skewed, so I took a step back and a deep breath, and started writing for God.  Not for recognition, not for money, not for success.  I wrote with Him in mind.  My stories contained unapologetic references to Him—always as a part of the characters themselves—and  were in my heart dedicated to God.  I still prayed for publication, but now I was praying for the ability to use my stories to help reflect a little of His light.  And money was no longer a factor.

Guess what?  I had four stories published this year, for one of which I was paid.  I had not prayed for selfish success, but He delivered success anyway.

What does that have to do with my crossdressing?  I hear you asking.

This: God clearly wanted me to write, but what?  I wanted to wear dresses, so badly I prayed for it.  God said “Okay, you can have your dresses, but you need to write about it.  You need to bounce a little of My light into corners filled with despair, or confusion, or doubt.  You need to use your words—the words I will give you—to bring some of My lost sheep back into the fold.  To do this, you need to be at peace in your mind so you can hear me, which at this moment means feeling comfortable and relaxed by wearing the clothes that help you relax, and I will give you a measure of that peace.”

And he did.  He has since answered prayers for specific articles of clothing I was looking for, He has guided me to places where I found things unlooked-for that I ended up loving, He has opened some doors—just a tiny crack, in some cases—that allow me to express my inner woman, and therefore relax and focus my mind.  And a relaxed mind is better equipped to hear its Creator speaking.

I know He’s reached a handful of people through me.  I don’t know to what extent He has helped any of them by using my words here, or on the forums at crossdressers.com, but I do know He has reached them and that He has helped some of them.  I am thrilled, each time it happens, that He sees fit to use me as His instrument.  It’s a wonderful feeling, believe it or not, to be used this way–at once humbling and lifting.  I pray constantly that He continues to see fit to make me His instrument, in whatever small parts He chooses for me.

He has also used several people here and on cd.com to help me—often at the precise moment when I really needed them—and for that and for them I am truly, truly thankful.  You know who you are.

With His love, and in His service, I remain

-Annie

Is 48:17-18.
Thus says the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I, the LORD,
your God, teach you what is for your good, and lead you on the way you
should go. If you would hearken to my commandments, your prosperity would be like a river, and your vindication like the waves of the sea;

The Wings of a Rock

For twenty-five years I was my wife’s rock.  Her touch-stone, her stability, her support, her foundation.  Her childhood was difficult, for reasons I won’t go into here. Some of this transferred onto me, in that she ended up relying on me to hold her up, and I did my best.

I was too good at it.

When I say I was her rock, I mean she relied on me to provide stability for nearly every aspect of her life: financially (she hasn’t had a full-time job for years), emotionally (she has few friends, and none she feels comfortable confiding in), mentally (see “emotionally” above…everyone needs real people to talk to), spiritually (her faith isn’t as strong as mine, so she relies on me to tell her what I think God is saying)…you name it.  And over the years, I just fed into her reliance on me. I taught her that it was okay to stand on somebody else’s feet.

When I came out to her, I pulled the rock out from under her. Completely tumbled her end-over-end into the dirt. To be honest, I didn’t realize I was literally every kind of stability for her.  I thought she’d wobble for a bit and come out back on her feet.

Boy was I wrong.

I’ve never felt worse about anything in my life…and never felt more trapped. Because how can I not be her rock when she has no other foundation for stability?  Right now I just want to explore my female side, just want to move around a little, but rocks don’t move.

Even when she gets through the crisis she’s going through, she has said she does not think she can handle the crisis I caused by my crossdressing.

Let me step back.  It’s not my crossdressing that causes her problems.  It’s the fact that I’m a crossdresser.  Do you see the difference?  If my dressing was causing her to be scared, it would be because I was doing it more than she could handle, or I wanted more out of it than she was willing to give, or was spending too much money on it, or something like that. There would be some external pressure put upon her that would cause her stress, in other words.

No, the mere fact that I like to wear dresses at all is what frightens her.  It’s not within the realm of things she can cope with. She literally can not handle thinking about me that way,  Unfortunately it’s the only way she can even see me any more.

So tell me how screwed I am.  The only solution she can live with–short of a true, God-given miracle–is for me to give it up entirely, to never wear another stitch of women’s clothes again, to never think about wearing a dress, to never look a a pair of heels without being 100% masculine about it.

And I can’t do those things. Not won’t…can’t.  If I could give it up, I would have done so one of the thousand times I tried in the past quarter-century. It does not go away–never for long, never entirely.

And this is the problem, the thing that caused her rock to throw her to the ground: a rock never moves. It never gets to do anything at all. Its job is to sit half-buried in the earth and hold up whatever stands atop it. Whatever is atop it can move all it wants–can dance, fly, spin, jump, whatever. But the rock can never move.

The problem is, this particular rock has wings. And it desperately needed to stretch those wings.  It needs to take off and soar into the sky.  It was never meant to be a rock.

Okay, so you say “why couldn’t you stretch your wings in some other way? Write, draw, compose, tackle, jump, run, swim, etc.”  Tried that.  I write.  I love writing. But not even that stretched my wings enough. What about another hobby, or sports, or cars, or anything.  Stretch your wings in a more normal way!

Great idea, except for one small problem.  My wings aren’t made ofscorecards or pool-laps.  They’re not made of drywall or sports cars.  They’re not made of pigskin or gasoline engines.

My wings are made of satin and lace. They might even be pink.

If my wife were to read that she’d completely lose it.  It’s one of those things she simply can not hear without going literally insane.

Do we choose how we were made? No. God chose for us. He made my wings satin and lace.  They are wide wings, beautiful and reflective and God-made wings.  They were furled and cramped for forty years.  They need to stretch, to flap, to lift me into the sky. They need to soar over the world, giving back just a tiny fraction of the Light they were given.

But they are pinned.  Pinned by my own choice to be her rock all those years ago.  Pinned by her inability to accept them, by her need to shade her eyes rather than look at them. Pinned by her fear of what I am.

I don’t know how to shade her eyes, short of continuing to lie to her about whether I want to buy that dress for myself, about how often I need to dress, about how far I want to fly.  But since that’s all I can do to keep her stable, I do it.

And it’s killing me.

I can not change who I am, nor do I want to.  I’m doing more to reflect God’s Light (I hope) as Dianna then I ever did before. God called me to do this, calls me to write, and I feel He wants me to write as Dianna.  Why should it make a difference, you ask?  I don’t know, but it does.  The old me couldn’t write the things I’m writing now. The old me could not express myself properly to get these thoughts out.  The old me was not relaxed or comfortable or confident enough to do what I’m doing here.

Ony Dianna feels free enough to write Confessions of a Christian Crossdresser.

Who cares?  Well, maybe not a lot of people, but I know I’ve already touched one or two souls.

How can I not believe God wants me to do this?

Stretch your wings.  Discover what they’re made of.

Mine are pink satin and lace.

-Annie