Renewed and Transformed by the Gospel With Kyla Gillespie

Hey, mom and dad, Husband, wife, how you love each other and serve each other is the most important gospel witness you’re going to give to your kids. Our marriages are like gardens. They the weeds have to be pulled up, fertilizer has to be put down. There’s water, there’s sun. Please, please, please nurture your marriage because it affects more than just you.

And my wife is the product of a divorce. And at five years old, she too felt like, well, it’s my fault. And I think naturally we think it’s our fault because if it is, we think we can fix it. And so it’s important for us not to overlay on our children our immaturity and selfishness versus going to the cross and living a cruciform life of allowing the Holy Spirit to shape us into the husbands and wives that we need to be. So thank you for sharing that.

So it sounds like you probably went through some depression when your parents divorced and those types of things. Yeah, I think I did. I also went, you know, I was a little bit rebellious at school. I was getting. I was a tomboy, you know, and I would play sports, and so I just gravitated to boys, got along with them really well.

And I was starting to get into, you know, fights on the school grounds, and, you know, just angry at that time. And when I moved in with my mom and she got remarried to a non believer, unbeliever. And it was just like, it was so crazy for me because we had lived such a strict, you know, a good, strict Christian life, but we had so many boundaries, and we weren’t allowed to go to, you know, dances and parties and this and that, and then to, you know, move in and. And see my mom and my stepdad living together. And, you know, alcohol was introduced into their home, and that was just unheard of in our family before.

And so there was a lot of changes. And I ended up moving into the basement suite there. So I was with my mom, but I was also a little bit of a distance from downstairs to upstairs. So it was a huge change. Wow.

So when did you. When did you. When did it become a serious thought of yours to say, I am uncomfortable in a woman’s body. I need to be a man? Right.

This would, you know, jump into my probably late teens. So what ended up happening is a lot of things. So I got. I played hockey at a high level, and I wanted to get scouted coming out of high school, my graduation, and I ended up getting scouted for the Canadian Women’s national program in Calgary, Alberta, where they centralized the Olympic team. And we practiced and played there.

So I moved away from home. But it was the introduction in my grade 12 year of playing hockey in Vancouver and traveling back and forth was my first introduction into the LGBTQ community and really seeing other people that are experiencing same-sex attraction and other people in the LGBTQ community at that time in the 2000s, we called, like, butch lesbians or, you know, and so I gravitated into that. But I loved Jesus and I wanted to follow him. So there was a long period of time, years, where I fought and fought and fought to try to get rid of the same sex attraction and follow Jesus. But when I moved to Calgary, Alberta, really entrenched into the LGBTQ community, I started to feel that I just wasn’t comfortable in my own skin.

I was starting to Feel like gender dysphoria was. Was coming on even stronger in my life. Can I. Can I. Can I pause here?

Could you explain to us what does gender dysphoria feel like? Yeah, for me, I mean, it’s different for every person, every trans person. But for me, it would be like. I explain it as, like a piercing to the heart feeling when. When you’re around other people and they’re just staring at you and picking at the pieces.

So I’m feeling uncomfortable in. In spaces where other people are, and I feel like they’re judging me and. And misgendering me, because I was misgendered all my life. You know, I had short hair, and I was more athletic, tomboy, butchy. And so those labels just grabbed a hold onto my identity, and I started to that.

But yeah, and. And then I would try to get ready and go out, and it would take hours. I would try on different clothes, and I would feel uncomfortable. You know, we talk about chest dysphoria and. And the fact that, you know, growing into your female gender.

My female gender was difficult in that area, and so there was a lot of dysphoria around there, and I didn’t know how to alleviate that dysphoria. Wow. Thank you for being so vulnerable, because I think there are people at our church, Transformation Church, who are walking alongside of their children and loving them and encouraging them in the gospel, getting them the help they need, but I think empathy and compassion, because you don’t know what a person is feeling on the inside and what they’re going through. So when did you decide, hey, I’m gonna become a man? So there.

There was that 19 moment where I moved away from home, graduated playing hockey. Something impactful happened all my life, and I believe it was God’s hand of protection over me. I just. It was easy for me to say no to drinking and partying in high school and all that kind of stuff, but I was so broken. My dad had got remarried.

He had that, you know, after a few years, didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. He had shared with me that it was just easier to start over with his new family. He didn’t know how to have a relationship. So at 19, what I did is in my anger and my. Wait, hold on.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me pause here. I just want to make sure I heard what you’re saying, and I want to make sure our audience heard what you’re saying. So your father has a new family. There’s five kids in it, at 19, he tells you what?

Well, it was a little bit before this, you know. Well, yeah, around 18, 19, I called him and I said we hadn’t had a relationship because I stopped going there at about probably 16 years old because I just felt unwanted at my dad’s. And so there was this time where I just wanted him in my life. He was a huge part. He came to everything.

And so I called him one day and I asked him, dad, can we have a relationship together? And that’s when he said those heartbreaking words over the phone to me, which just crushed me. And then it led into more rebellion, which, at the age of 19, I took my first drink of alcohol and I didn’t know the impact that that would have on me for over a decade. Yeah. You know, if no one has ever said this to you before, I’m sorry that that happened because rejection has a way of diminishing our self worth.

And one of the things we say at Transformation Church is the way you feel about yourself is the way you treat yourself. And that’s why understanding our identity in Christ and being the beloved of God and nothing can change that. But I could see at 19, with all you’re talking about, the divorce, the gender dysphoria, tomboy. I could see how a community of people who are lesbians are going through the same thing. I can see how that’s like.

Well, at least they accept me, right? Wow. And so you started. So did you start drinking, like, heavily or socially or in the hockey community? It was just like what we did on weekends.

We, you know, we still trained at a national level and a high level playing in the national Women’s Hockey League. So we had to, you know, keep our act together for us, you know, for the most part. But it was really socially accepted to go out to bars and hang out at houses and just drink and have parties together. And so that was more at the beginning. What ended up happening is I.

I felt like when I took that first drink, it suppressed everything that I had been feeling. The same sex attraction, the gender dysphoria, the abandonment of my father, and even the uncomfortableness in my own skin allowed me, because I’m a pretty. I was a pretty shy person to begin with. And this just gave me, you know, liquid courage, as you would call it, right. To be someone different than I was, feeling broken and shame and guilt and all that kind of stuff.

But unfortunately, what it did is it started to ruin my life in the fact that I gave up following Jesus. So as a Teenager, you’re singing in front of class, you are talking about Christ. You’re still battling your parents. Get a divorce, you’re battling. You’ve got to choose the rejection of your dad embracing by the LGBTQ community within this.

Within hockey. And then you start drinking. And did you miss Jesus? Yeah, the whole time. 11 years of being an alcoholic.

You know, some people, some friends would come to me and say, like, what would make you, you know, not have so much anger and. And do really ridiculous things When I was out in public places drinking and in. In the middle of a blackout, and the next day, I would always say, Jesus, like, I miss the church. I. I knew that that was the missing piece of my life.

However, I wasn’t ready to surrender every area of my sexuality and gender to God. And so for me, I remember this one time where it was so black and white. It was, follow Jesus or have this other life so far apart from him. And it would take Till I was 23, and I met somebody after wrestling for so many years, and I gave up on fighting same sex attraction, and I just chose that life. And so alcohol really allowed me to suppress the truth and suppress following Jesus.

Yeah. Wow. So when is it that you go, hey, I’m not comfortable in my skin. I’m gonna be a man. What’s that whole process like?

Yeah, I think as for, you know, meeting other LGBTQ people and finding out that other people have same sex attraction and that gave language into that area of my life, it was the same. After I had trained for about three or four years, I moved back to Vancouver and, you know, wrestling with my gender identity and my sexuality. But in about 2003, I had met some friends, and they were talking about, you know, transgender issues and wanting to transition. And actually, a couple of them had already started the process of transitioning. And so when I heard that for the first time, someone really explained, like, how their gender dysphoria affected them, what they saw, you know, when they looked in the mirror, they saw a guy, not a woman.

And so all those kind of things started to go, ah, you know, like, now. Now I understand that. That’s what I feel. And I started to see these outward changes in them, and I wanted what they had. So I did.

I started, you know, binding, which is like, wearing this really tight shirt, so it presses your. Your chest down to look more male when you’re out in public places. And that would help with the dysphoria. But I wasn’t satisfied there. And so it would take coming into recovery and admitting I was an alcoholic in 2011, actually before I would actually come out as transgender.

Wow. Okay, so you come out as trans. And I’ve. I’ve seen pictures, and when I say transformation, the only way I know you’re. You’re the same person is because I know you, but, like, you had a.

Like a. Like a beard, and. And that was for five years, is that right? Ultimately, six years, yeah. Okay, so six years, you’re.

You’re. You’re. You’re living as a. Is the language trans man? Is that correct?

Yes. A transgender man? Yeah, transgender. So you’re living as a transgender man, and you meet some Christians and what happened? Yeah, so I go into recovery.

God has a funny plan. He’s always, you know, working when we. We don’t even know it. And the pastor that I used to have growing up actually was now in Vancouver, and he was working at a church I had heard that is based for recovering addicts and in the local Tri City area in Coquitlam, bc. And so I had reached out to him first, and he started to kind of counsel me, and I said, you know, like, I’m an alcoholic, and I’m going to transition.

But in that process, he pointed me to a Christian home in. In the area, and there was a ministry called God Rock on Saturdays that was mandatory for us to go to. So I entered the women’s facility, and so we went to this ministry called God Rock on Saturdays and church on Sundays. And church was the same church denomination as I had grown up in. And so it was just like a total.

You know, it was crazy how God put me in the same places as I had grown up with as. As a kid and a teenager. It was just crazy. It blew my mind. But there was something really specific that happened.

You know, in recovery, they talk about having a God of your own understanding. And so I could jump aboard on that, because the God of my own understanding at the time when I was coming out as transgender and entering recovery was a God that looked a lot like me and said yes to all the same things. So, you know, transitioning was like, oh, yeah, I think God approves of this, because I’m hearing him say that in my own head, my own voice, and so that. That I did. But what I realized is this wasn’t the God of the Bible.

And so those five years of, you know, coming. Coming out as trans, going into recovery was crazy because I. I started on testosterone, you know, had some surgeries, and by year five, fully, like you said, had a Beard. No one would have been able to tell that I was born a biological female. And.

And something happened in year five is new people came to take over the ministry at. At God Rock on Saturdays. And before it was like there was truth here and there, but it wasn’t always saturated in biblical teaching and community. And these people that took over, Jeff, Jess and bj, my pastor now, they loved Jesus and they started to open up the word of God. They started to read verse by verse.

There was nothing hidden there. We started to do community groups and I started to hear their stories. And I’m like, these people look put together, but man, they have brokenness too. Maybe I could one day share, you know, 33 years of living as, or 31 years of living as female. All my accolades, everything, my whole life before that maybe I could actually share with them.

But I was very cautious and careful who I shared it with, especially Christians, because I didn’t know how anyone would react to it. But once we started to get to know each other within like six months or so, I brought, you know, told my pastor and, and his wife. I said, I would love to share my story with you if you’d be willing to hear it. And I remember being at their house and they, they did, they listened and they loved me. It’s.

They didn’t change their theology of sex and marriage or gender or anything, but they met me where I was at in that moment and they said they loved me even more for my vulnerability. And so that was a really impactful time as we were building close relationships with one another. Wow, man, I can just like feel the depth of God’s love. You know, Romans 2:4 says, it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance. And I’m under the persuasion that when we are in our deepest sin, it is only the deep love of God that pulls us out.

So when was it that you said, okay, I am a female, I’ve been created to be female, and that’s what I’m going to be. Yeah, there was a lot of wrestling. There was a lot of conversations with Jess and BJ and then another two people, Kyle and Heidi. Kyle ended up being, becoming my best friend as Bryson. That was my name that I chose when I was male and transitioned.

And we just started to grow our relationships together. And then we started to listen to sermons. We started to open up the word of God even more. I started to, you know, feel that God was stirring something in me. You know, when he stirs something in you and he’s like, I want you to do these things.